4 ms·

It was just weird to me. The title specifies /usr as the prefix. If you meant the division in general you could have just left off $PREFIX altogether.

derefr 3y ago
"bin vs sbin" doesn't read right as English — it's almost-but-not-quite like the words are proper nouns that should be capitalized, but instead, it's that they're missing a symbol to indicate that they're paths. The vagueness would become problematic if I wanted to also use "bin dir" in the same paragraph to refer to binary-containing directories generally (i.e. both bin and sbin.) And the fact that "bin dir" is used that way, to group together both bins and sbins, is is why I didn't say "bin dirs vs sbin dirs." (Note how the prior sentence reads really oddly?) Putting them each in quotation marks — "bin" vs "sbin" — requires some annoying footwork if you expect you'll need to put larger sections of the paragraph in quotation marks. Most editorial guidelines discourage writers from using quotation marks to mention jargon terms for this reason — especially if the terms will be coming up more than once in a piece. "/bin vs /sbin" sounds like I'm talking specifically about the ones under /, rather than all of them. "./bin vs ./sbin" just sounds like I got confused and am talking about something that isn't actually the subject of the parent post. ".../bin vs .../sbin" is pretty good — but "..." here is just doing the same thing "$PREFIX" does but with less guidance as to how it should be interpreted — less ability to Google what it means. Trust me, I considered every option before settling on writing something as silly as "$PREFIX/bin". "$PREFIX/bin" is weird, but clear. And without an elegant best option, the "weird but clear" option is generally the one you should choose in technical writing. People can't generally call you 20 years later to help parse through a sentence that conflates three different usages of a term, but they can just Google any weird (but well-documented) jargon you've used.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  I think "bin vs sbin" reads fine as English given the context of the article, and if you wanted to be more exact you could just use single quotes. I think "bin dir" ad "sbin dir" work fine as well because of the context of the article. That's just me though. I appreciate the thought you put into your decision as well as your detailed explanation, thank you. I wasn't expecting a detail explanation, but I am always interested in people's reasoning when it's different from mine.

derefr 3y ago

"bin vs sbin" doesn't read right as English — it's almost-but-not-quite like the words are proper nouns that should be capitalized, but instead, it's that they're missing a symbol to indicate that they're paths. The vagueness would become problematic if I wanted to also use "bin dir" in the same paragraph to refer to binary-containing directories generally (i.e. both bin and sbin.) And the fact that "bin dir" is used that way, to group together both bins and sbins, is is why I didn't say "bin dirs vs sbin dirs." (Note how the prior sentence reads really oddly?) Putting them each in quotation marks — "bin" vs "sbin" — requires some annoying footwork if you expect you'll need to put larger sections of the paragraph in quotation marks. Most editorial guidelines discourage writers from using quotation marks to mention jargon terms for this reason — especially if the terms will be coming up more than once in a piece. "/bin vs /sbin" sounds like I'm talking specifically about the ones under /, rather than all of them. "./bin vs ./sbin" just sounds like I got confused and am talking about something that isn't actually the subject of the parent post. ".../bin vs .../sbin" is pretty good — but "..." here is just doing the same thing "$PREFIX" does but with less guidance as to how it should be interpreted — less ability to Google what it means. Trust me, I considered every option before settling on writing something as silly as "$PREFIX/bin". "$PREFIX/bin" is weird, but clear. And without an elegant best option, the "weird but clear" option is generally the one you should choose in technical writing. People can't generally call you 20 years later to help parse through a sentence that conflates three different usages of a term, but they can just Google any weird (but well-documented) jargon you've used.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
I think "bin vs sbin" reads fine as English given the context of the article, and if you wanted to be more exact you could just use single quotes. I think "bin dir" ad "sbin dir" work fine as well because of the context of the article. That's just me though. I appreciate the thought you put into your decision as well as your detailed explanation, thank you. I wasn't expecting a detail explanation, but I am always interested in people's reasoning when it's different from mine.