5 ms·

See the thing is that if you're knee deep in an unfamiliar system trying to fix it you type "ls" about a dozen times a minute. Adding two unnecessary keystrokes

by skorgu 18y ago

See the thing is that if you're knee deep in an unfamiliar system trying to fix it you type "ls" about a dozen times a minute. Adding two unnecessary keystrokes (doubling the length!) not only adds up it makes typos more common. There are some nice conventions though, once you know grep there's egrep, ngrep, etc. Then there's the -stat family, prstat, iostat, vmstat, mpstat, etc. Grep is its own special case, I'm not going to argue that it's a good name a priori but it does have the benefit of being completely unique not to mention far too entrenched to change now. Not to mention that it's "burp" in Yiddish. Unix is difficult to pick up but once your brain operates in that special warped way things do make sense by extension.

tome 18y ago
palish has a point to the extent that lsof is so infrequently used that it would do no harm to give it a more descriptive name. Nonetheless, I entirely agree with you about ls, and about sticking to the conventions that have developed around unix.
- 11ren 18y ago
  There's a tribal aspect, too; not to mention jargon as a barrier to entry. And what professional wants to forgo hard-won knowledge? That said, I kind of like the weird names, esp grep. (Wasn't that in Stranger in a Strange Land or something?) But I do object to inconsistent options. One example is: mkdir -p a/b/c This will make all three nested directories, if needed; but there is no equivalent: mv -p x a/b/c/y There also isn't: cp -p a/b/c [1]. You have to create the nested destination directories (a/b/c) first. [1] cp has a -p option, but with a different meaning... BTW: It would be nice if HackerNews had the `` markdown of Reddit for inline code. There's been a bit of code sharing recently, and I like that in a "hacker" site.
  - palish 18y ago
    For code, use two spaces at the start of the line. like this
    - 11ren 18y ago
      thanks, I know. I referred to inline code.
  - gaius 18y ago
    Grok, you're thinking of.
    - 11ren 18y ago
      yes! thanks,
  - d0mine 18y ago
    Inconsistent options are like irregular verbs in English (the most frequently used verbs are both ancient and irregular as a rule).

by skorgu 18y ago

tome 18y ago

palish has a point to the extent that lsof is so infrequently used that it would do no harm to give it a more descriptive name. Nonetheless, I entirely agree with you about ls, and about sticking to the conventions that have developed around unix.

11ren 18y ago
There's a tribal aspect, too; not to mention jargon as a barrier to entry. And what professional wants to forgo hard-won knowledge? That said, I kind of like the weird names, esp grep. (Wasn't that in Stranger in a Strange Land or something?) But I do object to inconsistent options. One example is: mkdir -p a/b/c This will make all three nested directories, if needed; but there is no equivalent: mv -p x a/b/c/y There also isn't: cp -p a/b/c [1]. You have to create the nested destination directories (a/b/c) first. [1] cp has a -p option, but with a different meaning... BTW: It would be nice if HackerNews had the `` markdown of Reddit for inline code. There's been a bit of code sharing recently, and I like that in a "hacker" site.
- palish 18y ago
  For code, use two spaces at the start of the line. like this
  - 11ren 18y ago
    thanks, I know. I referred to inline code.
- gaius 18y ago
  Grok, you're thinking of.
  - 11ren 18y ago
    yes! thanks,
- d0mine 18y ago
  Inconsistent options are like irregular verbs in English (the most frequently used verbs are both ancient and irregular as a rule).