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Ubuntu command line fu - How not to spell "ls"
- Tombar 16y agoSo `ubuntish`
- Oompa 16y ago`brew install sl` if you want it on OS X.
- philwelch 16y ago`[sudo] port install sl` works too, if you're still on MacPorts.
- heatdeath 16y ago"Still on" and intend to stay on.
- Lewisham 16y agoSomewhat off-topic, but why are people advocating Homebrew over MacPorts? I've never found a port I thought should have been in MacPorts not being there, `sudo port -v install [package]` always seems to work, and dependencies are automagically followed. Looking at the website, it seems the general "improvement" is that you can edit formulas before you install; but that's exactly why I use MacPorts! I don't want to know how to install all these things, that abstraction is something I prefer. If you don't intend to do this, is Homebrew really any different?
- callahad 16y agoHomebrew tries to coexist with the pre-existing environment, whereas MacPorts and Fink create their own little isolated hierarchies in /opt and /sw, respectively. Which means that if install Git, that's all I get. With Macports, I'll also be installing duplicate versions of at least curl, openssh, and rsync, as per http://help.github.com/mac-git-installation/ http://help.github.com/mac-git-installation/
- ant5 16y agoWhich is a nice-sounding idea until the OS components are growing stale, at which point you'll be wondering why, for instance, your scripting language of choice's hash libraries don't support the modern idea of SHA256 (the answer being: because the OpenSSL version shipped with OS X was too old), or why your builds are now failing (because Apple shipped a library update without updating the headers in a Software Update). Homebrew tries to take the high ground here, but it's just naivety. They'll wind up installing "duplicate" versions of software too -- in fact, they already are doing so. The short-cycle of Leopard -> Snow Leopard won't be happening again soon, and the only alternative to adding "duplicate" software to your dependency tree is letting software go stale (for example: python 2.7 vs SL's 2.6.1). It's easy to say that the 10 years of knowledge that both MacPorts and Fink have about the platform is "stupid" when you haven't had the experience of maintaining a working packaging/port system through a few OS X release cycles, and aren't familiar with the problem space or Apple's policies.
- jackolas 16y agoExactly, I use homebrew occasionally, but its really a pain because it doesn't keep its python libs in its prefix fr example. If you use non-system stuff it's a real pain in the ass.
- ant5 16y ago> Looking at the website, it seems the general "improvement" is that you can edit formulas before you install; but that's exactly why I use MacPorts! I don't want to know how to install all these things, that abstraction is something I prefer. You can edit the MacPorts portfiles too, if you want to: sudo port edit <portname> I don't really understand why people are advocating Homebrew. The only real advantage seems to be the smaller dependency tree achieved by relying on Apple's shipped components, but that's a short-term band-aid that isn't going to last.
- dimarco 16y agoBUGS It rarely shows contents of current directory.
- zck 16y agoI hope that it actually performs an ls at a 1/10 probability -- just enough so that people will see it once in a while, but not enough to be relied on.
- mseebach 16y ago$ sl The program 'sl' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install sl I deeply appreciate that this is the case, even though it's drastically defeating the purpose of showing something when ls is misspelled.
- Dunearhp 16y agoIt was installed by default on one of my old debian boxes. The first time I stumbled upon it I felt like I was in the twilight zone. It took some time to realize what it was.
- wipt 16y agoOdd that it came from Debian, yet it seems to have found it's home with ubuntu
- mbubb 16y agoI get the joke but am not sure that it was originally a debian thing. I have seen it in BSD and here are also rpms for this. A good debian/ ubuntu ascii art joke is the "apt-get moo" sl is a lot of fun when you first stumble across it...
- ars 16y agoIt's on debian too: http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sl.html http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sl.html
- krakensden 16y agoYou realize that most of Ubuntu's packages come straight from Debian, right?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ars 16y agoJust in case you feel left out: ( ) (@@) ( ) (@) () @@ O @ O @ O (@@@) ( ) (@@@@) ( ) ==== ________ ___________ _D _| |_______/ \__I_I_____===__|_________| |(_)--- | H\________/ | | =|___ ___| _________________ / | | H | | | | ||_| |_|| _| \_____A | | | H |__--------------------| [___] | =| | | ________|___H__/__|_____/[][]~\_______| | -| | |/ | |-----------I_____I [][] [] D |=======|____|________________________|_ __/ =| o |=-~~\ /~~\ /~~\ /~~\ ____Y___________|__|__________________________|_ |/-=|___|=O=====O=====O=====O |_____/~\___/ |_D__D__D_| |_D__D__D_| \_/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- code_duck 16y agoI was feeling left out.... "The program 'sl' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install sl" What's the point if I have to know about it and explicitly install it? Kind of ruins the surprise, but I guess I can set it up for unsuspecting others...
- jrockway 16y agoWhat's the point if I have to know about it and explicitly install it? I can set it up for unsuspecting others.
- aguynamedben 16y agoyour sysadmins should have taken care of this =)
- w1ntermute 16y agoI recall it being installed by default on an older version of Ubuntu.
- hugh3 16y agoOddly enough, I don't think I've ever typed "sl" instead of ls. (In fact I had a great deal of difficulty correctly typing sl there.) Hypothesis: the typo "sl" is only common among left-handers.
- okahnus 16y agoI'm left-handed, and have never made that typo.
- graphene 16y agoditto; a mistake I make far more often is hitting <enter> before s.
- smcl 16y agoFor some reason most of the guys I want to uni with (Heriot-Watt) had "alias l=ls" in their .config. I've not seen this with guys I know who were at other unis or with anyone I currently work with. I know it clearly wasn't pioneered at HW (very little outside the area of brewing and distilling is), but I wonder why it had such a high penetration there. Perhaps we were all equally lazy, or a teaching assistant suggested it 1st year and it stuck?
- hugh3 16y agoI have l aliased to ls -l.
- paulgb 16y agoI'm right-handed, and I make the typo all the time, to the point that I've aliased it. I think it's that I type it so quickly (both keys are in the "home row") that each key goes down at about the same time.
- hugh3 16y agoOK, I shall consider my hypothesis sufficiently falsified.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoThis has been around long enough that it was on the old Solaris workstations I used at my last job. Except on the Solaris boxes it actually made a very loud and obnoxious steam whistle noise to go with the animation, just to make sure everyone in the office knew that you mistyped `ls`. Turning down the volume didn't even work because it specifically sent the audio to the hardware speaker securely located inside the case. Needless to say, I quickly added `alias sl=ls` to my .alias as soon as the embarassment subsided.
- ra88it 16y agoI've known about this for awhile, but I didn't realize it had flags. -F is awesome! However, I can't kill it will ctrl-c even when I set the -e flag. Is that supposed to be part of the joke?
- samstokes 16y agoAlong similar lines, a company I used to work for had a command-line tool called "metalink". If you mistyped it as "meatlink", your screen would fill with an ASCII-art rendering of the Japanese kanji meaning "meat", along with the legend "meatlink - the tastier alternative to metalink". (It would then go on to invoke metalink.)
- mtomczak 16y agoI'm sure I'll get accused of having no sense of humor, but I have to observe that from a usability standpoint, this is unhelpful. It gives me no clue as to what I've done wrong, it wastes my time, and it offers me no help in correcting my behavior. I might install this on my personal machine for fun, but as a system administrator I have no business touching this. Responding to invalid input by actively mocking the user is about the worst decision you can make for discoverability. It's this kind of user interface thinking that can lead to a toolchain being rejected regardless of how powerful or useful the tools could be.
- AlexMax 16y agoI wonder if there is an equivalent for somebody who misspells ls -l as ls- l. That's one that nails me quite a bit, and all I can do is grumble as it takes few seconds for bash to realize that no, that's not a valid command anywhere in the system.
- ComputerGuru 16y agozsh: correct 'sl' to 'ls' [nyae]? n And only then do I get my choo-choo train. :) <3 zsh :)
- rw- 16y agothis has absolutely nothing to do with ubuntu. ubuntu != gnu/linux.
- ErrantX 16y agoI usually type ld by accident...