in defense of the command line

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Octavius and others seem to be intimidated by the command line.
Here is what helps me:

Think of a Linux command as a "sentence". The name of the command
is the verb of the sentence, it tells what to do. Sometimes that
is all there is to a command line. But usually you have to name
some objects of the action, what thing or things should be acted
on. Often those objects are the names of files. A sentence has a
verb and it has objects, so the sentence thing still works.

Example:

wc myfile.txt

The verb is "wc" and the thing the verb acts on is "myfile.txt".

The next step is to modify or qualify the action of the verb.
This is usually done on the command line between the verb and its
object or objects. These modifiers or qualifiers are called
"options" and start with a dash (-) character. Those are the
adverbs or adjectives of the sentence.

Example:

ls -t

The verb is "ls" and the adverb is "-t", which lists the files in
the order they were last modified or changed (t for time, not
hard to remember).

So, if the command line frightens you, think of it as a language,
made up of sentences, and sentences made up of a verb (just one
verb), maybe one or more adverbs or adjectives, and maybe one or
more objects for the verb to act on.


Now - everybody learn to talk Linux!

Chuck



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