in defense of the command line

[Ann Parsons]

Hi all,

<smile>  OK, Teddy, this makes a lot of sense to me.  Let me answer
you one question at a time.

>>>>> "Octavian" == Octavian Rasnita <orasnita at home.ro> writes:

    Octavian> Hi, thanks. Nice explanation.  I am not intimidate by
    Octavian> the command lines. I am frightened by the idea of
    Octavian> breaking something.  

Yes, it is OK to be a little afraid of your computer.  However, unlike
in Windows, if you type a wrong command, you will not crash your
system, or at least not usually.  

     Octavian> Maybe I type rm fILE instead of rm
    Octavian> File and I could delete another file. And I don't know
    Octavian> the undelete command.  

Well, I have two suggestions here.  One, when you type a command, use
your arrow keys to go over what you type and make sure that is what
you wanted to type before you hit the enter key.  You can also use the
cut and paste feature in emacs to take a command from a file and plunk
it right in the shell where you want to give the command.  Do you know
about the emacs shell.  You just type m-x shell and you're in a shell
buffer.  You can do all the normal commands from in there.
Unfortunately, once you type rm filename, it's gone.  There is no way
to recover it.  However, I'll tell you a secret, Teddy.  When you
write in Emacs, whenever you save a file, it makes a backup file.  For
example, if you name a file test.txt and you write in it, and then,
you save it, Emacs makes a copy of that file called text.txt~  If you
remove test.txt by mistake, so long as you have saved that file in
emacs, you will have test.txt~ as a backup, and you can type:  cp
test.txt~ test.txt and you will have your file.  It may not have
everything in it that the first file had, depending on how long ago
you saved it, but it will at least have most of your data.    In fact,
if you *really* want to delete a file you've created in emacs, you
have to delete the main file and its backup.  Otherwise you will be
left with a bunch of backup files in your directory.

Question?  Have you discovered the command m-x dired?  You can
undelete files from within dired if you want to use it.  Type:

m-x man 

and when it asked you what you want, type:

dired

Read about dired.  dired is your friend!  I love dired!  Oh, BTW, it's
pronounced dir`ed.  It means directory edit, I think. 

    Octavian>  The most used command by me is
    Octavian> pwd, to be sure that I am in the right directory, and
    Octavian> ls, to see the files from there.  

Yes, this is good, but if you put a dired listing of your current
directory in one of your buffers, you will not have to list the files
any more.  You can... no, you read about dired.  I'm not going to tell
you all the things dired can do.

    Octavian> The other problem I
    Octavian> have is that I don't remember very easy the parameters.
    Octavian> I usually remember the command name but I can't remember
    Octavian> if I should use the -L parameter or the -l parameter.
    Octavian> I've seen that for some commands, the same parameter
    Octavian> make the same thing, but for other commands that
    Octavian> parameter make another thing.  If I remember well, it is
    Octavian> the case of -R parameter, but I don't remember exactly
    Octavian> in what commands makes what.  

Teddy, do you read braille?  If you do, then write what in English is
called a "cheat-sheet".  This is a paper that has on it all the
commands you use all the time in braille.  You write down the
perameters, then, when you need to use the command, you find your
braille list, and you look on it and read what you need.  After a
while, you'll remember.  Think, think, do not just say, "I have a
problem. I have a problem."  Think!  Reason!  God gave you a mind, use
it!  

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

<smile>  Linux is like an old gruff teacher who never praises you when
you do something right, she only yells at you when you do something
wrong.  If you type a command and you get the prompt back; it doesn't
tell you anything, that means that you've done it right.  Linux will
only yell at you when you do something wrong.  It never praises you,
only criticizes.   One nice thing is that Linux will at least give you
understandable errors, not criptic ones like Windows does.  If you do
something wrong, Teddy, Linux will let you know and it will tell you
what you did and why it is wrong.  

Ann P.

-- 
			Ann K. Parsons  
email:  akp at eznet.net 			ICQ Number:  33006854
WEB SITE:  http://home.eznet.net/~akp
"All that is gold does not glitter.  Not all those who wander are lost."  JRRT