4 ms·

The commands you list aren't too bad because they get quickly learned through use. And "grep" at least is pronounceable and feels strangely apt as a command nam

The commands you list aren't too bad because they get quickly learned through use. And "grep" at least is pronounceable and feels strangely apt as a command name. In general though I think the terseness of the standard Unix commands is a problem, particularly for less often used commands. Even after many years of using them I still get "du" and "df" confused, for example.

dkersten 8y ago
I always end up using both du and df because I can never remember which does what. Half the time, I also can’t remember their names even and have to look them up. All of the really frequent commands, I can remember (cp, mv, cat, tar, head, tail, ls, mkdir, rm, grep, sed, and a handful of common programs like package managers and git) and everything else I can never remember and have to look up. I personally don’t like the unix command names, most don’t make much sense to me personally. Sure, I like that they’re short, but I can never remember them unless I use them a lot.
- nomocrypto 8y ago
  Don’t worry, I’m exactly the same way. disk fills up Me: Dammit, which command is which again? angry Googling It’s like the syntax for creating a symlink: I could live to be 100 and still forget the order of the arguments to ln.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
I always remember them as "disk usage" and "disk free".
netsharc 8y ago
But how.. du = disk usage, df = disk free...
- chimprich 8y ago
  "Disk usage" could plausibly be the command that tells you how much space you've got left. Maybe "disk free" doesn't apply quite as well to du's function. If I was designing them from scratch, I'd maybe call them something like "size" and "space" respectively.
  - JackCh 8y ago
    > "Disk usage" could plausibly be the command that tells you how much space you've got left. "Red touches yellow, you're an okay fellow. Red touches black, you're a dead jack" It's a good thing there aren't any coral snakes around where I live.
userbinator 8y ago
The way I remember du and df is Disk Usage and Display (mounted) Filesystems, respectively.
technofiend 8y ago
I learned Unix in the mid 80s but it wasn't until sometime later I learned or had the epiphany that grep was shorthand for g/re/p. As in global search for regular expression and print the results. Talk about a forehead slapping moment. Not everything in Unix is immediately obvious.

dkersten 8y ago

I always end up using both du and df because I can never remember which does what. Half the time, I also can’t remember their names even and have to look them up. All of the really frequent commands, I can remember (cp, mv, cat, tar, head, tail, ls, mkdir, rm, grep, sed, and a handful of common programs like package managers and git) and everything else I can never remember and have to look up. I personally don’t like the unix command names, most don’t make much sense to me personally. Sure, I like that they’re short, but I can never remember them unless I use them a lot.

nomocrypto 8y ago
Don’t worry, I’m exactly the same way. disk fills up Me: Dammit, which command is which again? angry Googling It’s like the syntax for creating a symlink: I could live to be 100 and still forget the order of the arguments to ln.

KozmoNau7 8y ago

I always remember them as "disk usage" and "disk free".

netsharc 8y ago

But how.. du = disk usage, df = disk free...

chimprich 8y ago
"Disk usage" could plausibly be the command that tells you how much space you've got left. Maybe "disk free" doesn't apply quite as well to du's function. If I was designing them from scratch, I'd maybe call them something like "size" and "space" respectively.
- JackCh 8y ago
  > "Disk usage" could plausibly be the command that tells you how much space you've got left. "Red touches yellow, you're an okay fellow. Red touches black, you're a dead jack" It's a good thing there aren't any coral snakes around where I live.

userbinator 8y ago

The way I remember du and df is Disk Usage and Display (mounted) Filesystems, respectively.

technofiend 8y ago

I learned Unix in the mid 80s but it wasn't until sometime later I learned or had the epiphany that grep was shorthand for g/re/p. As in global search for regular expression and print the results. Talk about a forehead slapping moment. Not everything in Unix is immediately obvious.