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Show HN: Twelve Days of Shell

82 points by zoidb 6y ago

Zhyl 6y ago
These are like a Christmas themed bash koans. I love it.
SwiftyBug 6y ago
Very nice and very educational! I'm kind of ashamed to learn only now that I can move a file without having to explicitly specify the destination file name.
- zoidb 6y ago
  thanks! glad you enjoyed it. I had some downtime last weekend so thought I would create a Christmas edition of an old project https://cmdchallenge.com https://cmdchallenge.com. It's a little bit more gentle of an introduction to shell than the main site.
CGamesPlay 6y ago
Heh, I somehow crashed the server with `grep -ie '^the' night-....`, and the error message appeared to be cached, so I had to go with `grep -ei '^the.' night-...`. Then I tried a `ls /proc` and got a rate limiting error. I think I'm not in the target audience, but it's cute!
mxuribe 6y ago
These were quite fun!
throw0101a 6y ago
Meta: The twelve days start on Christmas Day (25th): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas The time period before-hand is Advent (from the Latin to come): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent
pc86 6y ago
Love it. I never knew ls took arguments! Shows how much time I spend in the terminal :)
Delk 6y ago
Kind of fun, although to me there seems to be a bit too much guesswork as to what you're actually supposed to do. For example the puzzle for day 8 (and especially day 9) doesn't really tell me anything about what I'm actually supposed to achieve, and clicking "learn" to find it out actually gives the solution outright.
- zoidb 6y ago
  good point, I will add a hint to #8
cashewchoo 6y ago
I had fun. These are a great, gentle intro to powerful tools. One recommendation: Add a "What?" accordion entry that just states in plain speech what exactly you want done, without giving away the how. For a few of these I read the prompt and was like "uh..." then clicked learn and was like "oh all they want is find -type f". Also, small nit, "find ./place-for-pipers -type f -name "piper" | xargs grep -i 'piping'" wasn't accepted due to the filenames being prefixed to the output. I feel like this is one of the benefits of piping it all through a single grep (grep, knowing the context of multiple input files, gives you useful output). Obviously you can massage both solutions to give the others' text output, but I just felt a little cheated that my response wasn't marked correct.
- zoidb 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! > One recommendation: Add a "What?" accordion entry that just states in plain speech what exactly you want done, without giving away the how. For a few of these I read the prompt and was like "uh..." then clicked learn and was like "oh all they want is find -type f". Yeah this is a common complaint, because either the "learn" section gives away too much. I think I will just add more hints underneath the challenge like I did recently for #8 https://12days.testing.cmdchallenge.com/#/12days_8 https://12days.testing.cmdchallenge.com/#/12days_8
  - zoidb 6y ago
    > Also, small nit, "find ./place-for-pipers -type f -name "piper" | xargs grep -i 'piping'" wasn't accepted due to the filenames being prefixed to the output. I feel like this is one of the benefits of piping it all through a single grep (grep, knowing the context of multiple input files, gives you useful output). Obviously you can massage both solutions to give the others' text output, but I just felt a little cheated that my response wasn't marked correct. Hm, yeah we can probably just search for the filenames and ignore everything else to make it a little more forgiving.
    - ecliptik 6y ago
      you can add -h to grep, which won't print the filenames (this is what I did an it accepted the answer).
Freak_NL 6y ago
Unable to process command - got response: {"message":"Internal Server Error"} Heh. \ is not a valid entry.
- zoidb 6y ago
  yeah i saw a lot of those errors :( it calls a lexical parser on the input which doesn't like it.
aardvarkr 6y ago
There seems to be a bug on mobile safari for iPhone. I can’t type more than one word so can’t progress past the grep command on 2
- xondono 6y ago
  Same here, I’ll try later from PC, it’s a nice idea.
actionscripted 6y ago
Love it. I do think that the "learn" section should always be open. For me (FF) after the first challenge it's closed by default which leaves just a command line and no clear direction.
ktm5j 6y ago
Fun! But I think I found a bug: If you hit enter without any input then it crashes and pegs a CPU core at 100% (in firefox on Linux).
tambourine_man 6y ago
Doesn't work in Safari 13.0.2 SyntaxError: Invalid character '\ud801'
tus88 6y ago
"Javascript is required". Right...
myroon5 6y ago
Wish history of previous commands and output were kept like a standard shell to scroll through and copy-paste things
- boogies 6y ago
  ^P and ^R both work

82 points by zoidb 6y ago

Zhyl 6y ago

These are like a Christmas themed bash koans. I love it.

Very nice and very educational! I'm kind of ashamed to learn only now that I can move a file without having to explicitly specify the destination file name.

zoidb 6y ago
thanks! glad you enjoyed it. I had some downtime last weekend so thought I would create a Christmas edition of an old project https://cmdchallenge.com https://cmdchallenge.com. It's a little bit more gentle of an introduction to shell than the main site.

CGamesPlay 6y ago

Heh, I somehow crashed the server with `grep -ie '^the' night-....`, and the error message appeared to be cached, so I had to go with `grep -ei '^the.' night-...`. Then I tried a `ls /proc` and got a rate limiting error. I think I'm not in the target audience, but it's cute!

mxuribe 6y ago

These were quite fun!

throw0101a 6y ago

Meta: The twelve days start on Christmas Day (25th): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas The time period before-hand is Advent (from the Latin to come): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent

pc86 6y ago

Love it. I never knew ls took arguments! Shows how much time I spend in the terminal :)

Delk 6y ago

Kind of fun, although to me there seems to be a bit too much guesswork as to what you're actually supposed to do. For example the puzzle for day 8 (and especially day 9) doesn't really tell me anything about what I'm actually supposed to achieve, and clicking "learn" to find it out actually gives the solution outright.

zoidb 6y ago
good point, I will add a hint to #8

cashewchoo 6y ago

I had fun. These are a great, gentle intro to powerful tools. One recommendation: Add a "What?" accordion entry that just states in plain speech what exactly you want done, without giving away the how. For a few of these I read the prompt and was like "uh..." then clicked learn and was like "oh all they want is find -type f". Also, small nit, "find ./place-for-pipers -type f -name "piper" | xargs grep -i 'piping'" wasn't accepted due to the filenames being prefixed to the output. I feel like this is one of the benefits of piping it all through a single grep (grep, knowing the context of multiple input files, gives you useful output). Obviously you can massage both solutions to give the others' text output, but I just felt a little cheated that my response wasn't marked correct.

zoidb 6y ago
Thanks for the feedback! > One recommendation: Add a "What?" accordion entry that just states in plain speech what exactly you want done, without giving away the how. For a few of these I read the prompt and was like "uh..." then clicked learn and was like "oh all they want is find -type f". Yeah this is a common complaint, because either the "learn" section gives away too much. I think I will just add more hints underneath the challenge like I did recently for #8 https://12days.testing.cmdchallenge.com/#/12days_8 https://12days.testing.cmdchallenge.com/#/12days_8
- zoidb 6y ago
  > Also, small nit, "find ./place-for-pipers -type f -name "piper" | xargs grep -i 'piping'" wasn't accepted due to the filenames being prefixed to the output. I feel like this is one of the benefits of piping it all through a single grep (grep, knowing the context of multiple input files, gives you useful output). Obviously you can massage both solutions to give the others' text output, but I just felt a little cheated that my response wasn't marked correct. Hm, yeah we can probably just search for the filenames and ignore everything else to make it a little more forgiving.
  - ecliptik 6y ago
    you can add -h to grep, which won't print the filenames (this is what I did an it accepted the answer).

Freak_NL 6y ago

Unable to process command - got response: {"message":"Internal Server Error"} Heh. \ is not a valid entry.

zoidb 6y ago
yeah i saw a lot of those errors :( it calls a lexical parser on the input which doesn't like it.

aardvarkr 6y ago

There seems to be a bug on mobile safari for iPhone. I can’t type more than one word so can’t progress past the grep command on 2

xondono 6y ago
Same here, I’ll try later from PC, it’s a nice idea.

actionscripted 6y ago

Love it. I do think that the "learn" section should always be open. For me (FF) after the first challenge it's closed by default which leaves just a command line and no clear direction.

ktm5j 6y ago

Fun! But I think I found a bug: If you hit enter without any input then it crashes and pegs a CPU core at 100% (in firefox on Linux).

tambourine_man 6y ago

Doesn't work in Safari 13.0.2 SyntaxError: Invalid character '\ud801'

tus88 6y ago

"Javascript is required". Right...

myroon5 6y ago

Wish history of previous commands and output were kept like a standard shell to scroll through and copy-paste things

boogies 6y ago
^P and ^R both work