in defense of the command line

[Octavian Rasnita]

Hi, thanks. Nice explanation.
I am not intimidate  by the command lines. I am frightened by the idea of
breaking something.
Maybe I type rm fILE instead of rm File and I could delete another file. And
I don't know the undelete command.
The most used command by me is pwd, to be sure that I am in the right
directory, and ls, to see the files from there.
The other problem I have is that I don't remember very easy the parameters.
I usually remember  the command name but I can't remember if I should use
the -L parameter or the -l parameter.
I've seen that for some commands, the same parameter make the same thing,
but for other commands that parameter make another thing.
If I remember well, it is the case of -R parameter, but I don't remember
exactly in what commands makes what.
In some commands, it means Recursive in the directory tree, but  in other
commands, it means another thing.

Another problem, and maybe here I can make something to  improve, is that
after I give a command like sync, it doesn't tell me if the command was
successfully or not, and I don't know what to do.
I typed that command from another account than root, and it didn't tell me
anything. It didn't tell me if the command  was successfully or not or if I
have the right to type that command from another account than root.



Teddy,
orasnita at home.ro

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Hallenbeck" <hallenbeck at valstar.net>
To: "Speakup Distribution List" <speakup at speech.braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 1:50 PM
Subject: in defense of the command line


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



--
Visit me at http://www.valstar.net/~hallenbeck
The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (57% of Full)


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