I love how the Unix commands have such intuitive naming.

[imsop@tech.lgbt]

@cstross The masterpiece of that convergence is "ps", where options include both "f" and "-f", with different meanings

[tomseppert@fosstodon.org]

@kamstrup
Like people remember where they were on 9/11, I remember vividly my first "shutdown -h now" on some BSD variant I just installed some 25 years ago.

My first non Microsoft install. Felt like magic.

[elnecesario@mastodon.social]

@datn @kamstrup
I did some research and learned that the double dash delimiter functions as an options terminator. The usage examples I found was e.g. deleting files starting with `-`:
`rm -- -r`

Could you show an example how the double dash delimiter can improve usage of regex?

[renardboy@mastodon.social]

@kamstrup or fsck when you need to fsck

[angusm@mastodon.social]

@jay @cstross @annehargreaves @kamstrup The best `man` pages are written to be so opaque that the only people who can understand the `man` page are people who don't need the `man` page because they know it all already.

Or possibly because they wrote the `man` page themselves.

[sjcooke66@mastodon.social]

@licho @kamstrup I thought 'cat' was the command that led to the Internet being MADE OF CATS

[torf@c.im]

@kamstrup Let alone git and gimp.

[annehargreaves@ioc.exchange]

@cstross @kamstrup Ah, OK. TIL

[argonaut@mastodon.social]

@kamstrup
‘cat’, however, seems not to do what the name implies—which is, indeed, very on brand.

[magicmix1@mastodon.social]

@kamstrup you chown’d that one.

[graemewinter@mas.to]

@xabean @jay @cstross @annehargreaves @kamstrup old enough to remember system V where you knew which part of man you wanted for system calls, library functions or command line programs

But they were also more gentle times when people were actually paid to write useful documentation and the man pages were actually helpful

[edavies@functional.cafe]

@dsw Except it's “umount” because the mental energy required to remember to leave out the “n” is less than the physical energy required to press just press the damn key, especially on an ASR33. /s

(Actually, last time I made a comment about this I was told that the reason was that very very early Unixes limited command lengths to 6 characters. There are two interpretations of the word “backward” in the phrase “backward compatibility”.)

@kamstrup

[jimfl@hachyderm.io]

@brouhaha @kamstrup On the other hand, everything burns, but paper doesn’t crash

[lallemandfabrice@mastodon.mim-libre.fr]

@kamstrup and for non-English speakers ?

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@angusm @jay @annehargreaves @kamstrup I used to write (and maintain) man pages for a living. What does that make *me*?

[astifter@mastodon.astifter.com]

@annehargreaves @kamstrup I really like the naming of the cat/tac pair.

[elephant@mastodontech.de]

@kamstrup Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_(Unix)

[a_cubed@mastodon.social]

@cstross @angusm @jay @annehargreaves @kamstrup
A survivor.
Rule 1, Charlie, Rule 1.

[groxx@hachyderm.io]

@kamstrup "man" if you need something explained at you

[bzdev@fosstodon.org]

@woe2you @marco @kamstrup Keystrokes were a bit expensive when Unix was created. Those teletypes tended to use a lot of paper (thermal paper, which came in long roles). And they were slow (I've used them).

Warning - the video shows these things, but there is a lot of typical you-tube babbling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeL3mbq1mEg