5 ms·

I frequently use TLDR, and I wouldn't describe it as an incantation. It's for the case where, say, I know there's a grep flag for inverse match or case-insensit

I frequently use TLDR, and I wouldn't describe it as an incantation. It's for the case where, say, I know there's a grep flag for inverse match or case-insensitive, but don't use it often enough to remember it. It surfaces the (community-driven) top use cases, and it's pretty clear from the context what the flags are doing. (As seen here: https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/blob/master/pages/common/grep.md https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/blob/master/pages/common/... ) If I don't see my use-case in tldr I'll move on to the man page. OTOH, sometimes I'll copy-paste some perl or awk dark magic from Stack Overflow, and then try modify it piecemeal to fit my case. That's an incantation :)

CaptArmchair 7y ago
> it's pretty clear from the context I think that largely depends on who's using the tools and how acquainted they are with command line tools. An absolute beginner likely will not know what tar's 'f' flag does, or assume something else. > OTOH, sometimes I'll copy-paste some perl or awk dark magic from Stack Overflow, and then try modify it piecemeal to fit my case. That's an incantation :) And I absolutely have no qualms doing the same when push comes to shove. Ain't nobody always got the time. ;-)
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  I will bite - I have been using linux for 4 years. I have used tar a lot and I don't know what v means. I switch between -xvf, -xvz, etc. x - extract | f - file | z - operating on tar.gz or similar. Edit: v - verbose
  - b5n 7y ago
    man tar | awk -F , '/-v,/ {print $2}'
  - anjbe 7y ago
    On OpenBSD (and other systems using mandoc as the default “man” program), I can jump to an unknown flag right away with the pager’s tag support: “:tv” -v Verbose operation mode. If -v is specified multiple times or if the -t option is also specified, tar will use a long format for listing files, similar to ls(1) -l. Or I can tack #v onto the end of the web URL: https://man.openbsd.org/tar.1#v https://man.openbsd.org/tar.1#v

CaptArmchair 7y ago

> it's pretty clear from the context I think that largely depends on who's using the tools and how acquainted they are with command line tools. An absolute beginner likely will not know what tar's 'f' flag does, or assume something else. > OTOH, sometimes I'll copy-paste some perl or awk dark magic from Stack Overflow, and then try modify it piecemeal to fit my case. That's an incantation :) And I absolutely have no qualms doing the same when push comes to shove. Ain't nobody always got the time. ;-)

thrwaway69 7y ago
I will bite - I have been using linux for 4 years. I have used tar a lot and I don't know what v means. I switch between -xvf, -xvz, etc. x - extract | f - file | z - operating on tar.gz or similar. Edit: v - verbose
- b5n 7y ago
  man tar | awk -F , '/-v,/ {print $2}'
- anjbe 7y ago
  On OpenBSD (and other systems using mandoc as the default “man” program), I can jump to an unknown flag right away with the pager’s tag support: “:tv” -v Verbose operation mode. If -v is specified multiple times or if the -t option is also specified, tar will use a long format for listing files, similar to ls(1) -l. Or I can tack #v onto the end of the web URL: https://man.openbsd.org/tar.1#v https://man.openbsd.org/tar.1#v