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How often do you have to look up the command for something?

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annadane
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How often do you have to look up the command for something?

#1 Post by annadane »

And how much do you have memorized so you don't have to?

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#2 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Very often :)

I use

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apropos $something
to find any commands related to $something.
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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#3 Post by Bulkley »

Again, very often. I use Internet search. What bugs me is that I can't remember the right instructions for opening each of the various tar balls. Every time I download a tar package I have to look it up.

annadane, do yourself a favour and familiarize yourself with the man pages. At first you won't understand anything. Almost nobody understands them perfectly so don't be discouraged. Eventually, you will learn syntax and that is important. Being able to check a man page to see how something works or what the options are will save you all sorts of trouble in the long run.

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#4 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Bulkley wrote:What bugs me is that I can't remember the right instructions for opening each of the various tar balls. Every time I download a tar package I have to look it up.
Did you know that most current versions of `tar` do this automatically?

This should work for any tarball:

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tar xf ball.tar.whatever
EDIT: sorry for the OT, OP.
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GarryRicketson
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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#5 Post by GarryRicketson »

I don't think I understand the question,.....
I couldn't find any command called "something"

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  apropos something
less(3p) - perl pragma to request less of something
 
I usually use 'man'
but again, no such command,..

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$ man something
man: No entry for something in the manual.
 

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 $ something
ksh: something: not found
Is this command 'something' some kind of new feature only to be found in
Debian ?
Post by Bulkley » 2016-12-17 16:13
Again, very often. I use Internet search. What bugs me is that I can't remember the right instructions for opening each of the various tar balls. Every time I download a tar package I have to look it up.
So I tried doing a search :
What does 'something' do on linux ?

But nothing about this command in the results either,...I think maybe it is
something I do not need to memorize, and this is the first ,and only time
I will need to try looking it up.
Also, I did not find any "packages" or "tar balls" available for down load,...

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#6 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

I used $something as a variable.

Please replace $something with whichever keyphrase is relevant for the search at hand.

For example, to search for comands related to wireless networking, we could try:

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empty@Arch ~ % apropos wireless
crda (8)             - send to the kernel a wireless regulatory domain for a given ISO / IEC 3166 alpha2
iw (8)               - show / manipulate wireless devices and their configuration
iwconfig (8)         - configure a wireless network interface
iwevent (8)          - Display Wireless Events generated by drivers and setting changes
iwgetid (8)          - Report ESSID, NWID or AP/Cell Address of wireless network
iwlist (8)           - Get more detailed wireless information from a wireless interface
iwpriv (8)           - configure optionals (private) parameters of a wireless network interface
iwspy (8)            - Get wireless statistics from specific nodes
netctl-auto (1)      - Control automatic selection of wireless netctl profiles
regulatory.bin (5)   - The Linux wireless regulatory database
rfkill (8)           - tool for enabling and disabling wireless devices
wireless (7)         - Wireless Tools and Wireless Extensions
Sorry for the confusion Garry :oops:

EDIT:

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empty@Arch ~ % export something=wireless
empty@Arch ~ % apropos "$something"
crda (8)             - send to the kernel a wireless regulatory domain for a given ISO / IEC 3166 alpha2
iw (8)               - show / manipulate wireless devices and their configuration
iwconfig (8)         - configure a wireless network interface
iwevent (8)          - Display Wireless Events generated by drivers and setting changes
iwgetid (8)          - Report ESSID, NWID or AP/Cell Address of wireless network
iwlist (8)           - Get more detailed wireless information from a wireless interface
iwpriv (8)           - configure optionals (private) parameters of a wireless network interface
iwspy (8)            - Get wireless statistics from specific nodes
netctl-auto (1)      - Control automatic selection of wireless netctl profiles
regulatory.bin (5)   - The Linux wireless regulatory database
rfkill (8)           - tool for enabling and disabling wireless devices
wireless (7)         - Wireless Tools and Wireless Extension
:D
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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#7 Post by GarryRicketson »

What bugs me is that I can't remember the right instructions for opening each of the various tar balls.
Oh. I forgot,... let me see, if I can remember, this. ----------thinking,-------
trying to remember,---- :idea:

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 man tar 

Found it :
TAR(1) General Commands Manual TAR(1)

NAME
tar - tape archiver

SYNOPSIS
tar {crtux}[014578befHhjLmNOoPpqsvwXZz]
[blocking-factor | archive | replstr] [-C directory] [-I file]
[file ...]
tar {-crtux} [-014578eHhjLmNOoPpqvwXZz] [-b blocking-factor]
[-C directory] [-f archive] [-I file] [-s replstr] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
The tar command creates, adds files to, or extracts files from an archive
file in ``tar'' format. A tar archive is often stored on a magnetic
tape, but can be stored equally well on a floppy, CD-ROM, or in a regular
disk file.

In the first (legacy) form, all option flags except for -C and -I must be
contained within the first argument to tar and must not be prefixed by a
hyphen (`-'). Option arguments, if any, are processed as subsequent
arguments to tar and are processed in the order in which their------------snip---
Or, if the manual is not clear enough:
How to unzip a .tar file on linux
First hit: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/tar-extract-linux/
Extract or Unpack a TarBall File

To unpack or extract a tar file, type:

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tar -xvf file.tar
That is what I do when I can not remember something, (and most of the time I can not remember much of anything) and I do
not have it in my 'history'
see

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man history
or in my "commands" file, where I keep notes on the commands
I use the most.,..... and until now I have never heard of any command called 'something',.... I had a hard time learning about the "foo" file and what it is
for as well, but it is a very important file, and everybody needs to know
about that, fortunately it is listed and there are plenty of search results
on what "foo" file does.
===== P.S. :
Thanks H_O_A_S,...
Sorry for the confusion Garry :oops:

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#8 Post by annadane »

This escalated quickly.

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#9 Post by arochester »

I'm not sure how you expect people to answer this, or how you will interpret what thay say.

The people who use the CLI will use it a lot. The people who don't want to use it much, will not use it much.

What answer do you want or expect? 47%? 4 out of 5? D?

There is always this, to remind people https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/refcard/refcard

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#10 Post by bw123 »

And how much do you have memorized so you don't have to?
...
This escalated quickly.
It was a fun thread, I give it a two

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$ apropos man --and apropos
apropos (1)          - search the manual page names and descriptions
resigned by AI ChatGPT

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#11 Post by pylkko »

My opinion is that while most people think that medieval rote memorizing techniques are boring a quaint... that they have their uses in some places in life. For example, when you have to look up the command sequence for tar every time and you use it often. You just end up loosing a lot of time and "flow" from your work searching for stuff like that...
Edit: word missing from sentence
and p.s imagine if you had not memorized the times tables in primary school. You'd be looking up 6 x 8 on google. But since you did memorize that, now you have it for life. Why stop doing this in adulthood?
Last edited by pylkko on 2016-12-17 23:43, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#12 Post by Ardouos »

Sometikes for known tools that I do not use often, all the time to find new tools that will may be useful, or to replace another tool. I mostly try to rely on man pages when I forget switches/ functions.
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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#13 Post by 4D696B65 »

A few things,

Take notes
Make a cheat sheet
Download a cheat sheet

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#14 Post by pendrachken »

pylkko wrote:My opinion is that while most people think that medieval rote memorizing techniques are boring a quaint... that they have their uses in some places in life. For example, when you have to look up the command sequence for tar every time and you use it often. You just end up loosing a lot of time and "flow" from your work searching for stuff like that...
Edit: word missing from sentence
and p.s imagine if you had not memorized the times tables in primary school. You'd be looking up 6 x 8 on google. But since you did memorize that, now you have it for life. Why stop doing this in adulthood?

I'm in my late 30's and never memorized the times table. Seems pretty pointless to me actually, I can just do the quick mental calculations in my head. I've also passed college algebra and statistics classes, with a few calculus classes soon to be taken too.

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6*8 ---> 8*2*3 = 48

if you need to break it down more:

8+8 = 16 : 16+16 = 32 : 32 + 16 = 48
No need for rote memorization of some stupid table when chaining a few dead simple calculations can be done in just as short of time. Or you could just use a calculator...


Saves brain space for the equations and such that actually matter.
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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#15 Post by dasein »

Although I agree with arochester that the question was inartfully phrased (after all, who keeps reliable and therefore trustworthy records on frequency of command lookups?), I can offer a general answer to the underlying philosophical question.

All. The. Damn. Time.

With some notable exceptions, command syntax just isn't worth devoting brain wrinkles to. It's more important to understand the theory of operation and look up the syntactical details when/as they become relevant.

My use of this strategy extends well beyond *nix commands. Some years back, I had occasion to use a high-end statistics package (SAS) a lot. I can explain the theory of operation behind, say, correspondence analysis all day. But I would consider it a gratuitous waste of scarce cognitive resources to memorize all of the switches used by SAS' PROC CORRESP.

The exceptions I mentioned fall into two categories: (a) constantly used (e.g., find) and (b) just too handy/insanely easy to remember (e.g., the -a flag on cp/rsync).

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#16 Post by GarryRicketson »

by pylkko » p.s imagine if you had not memorized the times tables in primary school. You'd be looking up 6 x 8 on google
I was going to comment, but changed my mind, but then when I saw this:
by pendrachken » I'm in my late 30's and never memorized the times table.
And decided to go ahead, there really are quite a few people that do not
know even the basic times tables, 1 thru 10,...for what ever reasons.
I think it is important, but in these days with calculators, maybe it isn't.
Any way here is something to help people memorize them, if they want to.

Image

Often I do have to do a search, example " What is the Linux command to "do this or that task" ? (where is says "this or that task" , would be a description of the task in question),.... another example, a new user might have to ask
"what is the linux command to list directories ? " or
"what is the linux command to multiply " ?
You can use 'bc' to do math, including multiply,

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 man bc 
BC(1) General Commands Manual BC(1)
NAME
bc - arbitrary-precision arithmetic language and calculator
SYNOPSIS
bc [-cl] [-e expression] [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
bc is an interactive processor for a language which resembles C but
provides unlimited precision arithmetic. It takes input from any
expressions on the command line and any files given, then reads the
standard input.
For example:

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$ bc
573 * 4
2292
2292 * 5789
13268388
13268388 / 5789
2292
quit
Of course with time, one starts
to remember the commands they use the most, some people would have to
do a search to find the right command for a task more often then others, it all
depends on their memory and how many commands they are all ready familiar
with, ......Now that I understand the question better............

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#17 Post by pylkko »

pendrachken wrote:
pylkko wrote:My opinion is that while most people think that medieval rote memorizing techniques are boring a quaint... that they have their uses in some places in life. For example, when you have to look up the command sequence for tar every time and you use it often. You just end up loosing a lot of time and "flow" from your work searching for stuff like that...
Edit: word missing from sentence
and p.s imagine if you had not memorized the times tables in primary school. You'd be looking up 6 x 8 on google. But since you did memorize that, now you have it for life. Why stop doing this in adulthood?

I'm in my late 30's and never memorized the times table. Seems pretty pointless to me actually, I can just do the quick mental calculations in my head. I've also passed college algebra and statistics classes, with a few calculus classes soon to be taken too.

Code: Select all

6*8 ---> 8*2*3 = 48

if you need to break it down more:

8+8 = 16 : 16+16 = 32 : 32 + 16 = 48
No need for rote memorization of some stupid table when chaining a few dead simple calculations can be done in just as short of time. Or you could just use a calculator...


Saves brain space for the equations and such that actually matter.
I think you missed the point entirely. Nobody needs to memorize anything. But it is something that can be done and works remarkably well. Anybody can remember a shopping list of any length with the method of loci, but anynody can use their time to write it on paper or even install some pointless app on a smart phone for that purpose. Some people claim cognitive health benefits from using your memory often but AFAIK the scientific literature is inconclusive.

And memorizing is something that is quite widely used in areas where people want to be able not spend effort on finding basic things, for example in medical schools and hospitals all around the world. Of course, when you are in front of a computer, looking up things is relatively easy. Also it does not make sense to memorize everything. It is an optimizing problem, i.e it make sense to memorize something when the total effort spent is less than the total cumulative effort of looking up over and over again. But I still believe that people too easily dismiss the usefulness of the methods just because they have negative personal feelings towards them.

I find your 'mental calculation' example really unconvincing. That you use emotiomally loaded term 'stupid tables' indicates to me that you are not addressing the issue rationally. What you suggest definetly does not 'save brain space'.. it makes something auyomatic and fast into something slow,effortful, and error prone.

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#18 Post by alan stone »

What was the question again? :oops:

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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#19 Post by phenest »

dasein wrote:... I can offer a general answer to the underlying philosophical question.

All. The. Damn. Time.
I agree. Also I think that would be the answer from anyone who uses the CLI regardless of how often.

If you're looking for some constructive tips:
1. Make a BASH alias If you using common flags with your command:

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alias diff='\diff -rupN'
As you can see, the alias can have the same name as the command. Aliases can be put in the ~/.bashrc file.

2. Copy some frequently viewed man pages to a text file:

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man ffmpeg > ffmpeg.man
I find it easier to open large man pages this way, especially when the command has a lot of parameters.
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Re: How often do you have to look up the command for somethi

#20 Post by kedaha »

annadane wrote:How often do you have to look up the command for something?
I don't use commands for my desktop computer and laptop beyond updating since I set them up and configured them long ago.
I use the command line via ssh to do LAMP server administration and I'm familiar with the basic commands.
annadane wrote:And how much do you have memorized so you don't have to?
I'm able to find my way around the file system and do file operations using the command line but I always check them from my own records or from the 'net. I've memorized the basic commands but of course I have to look up the more complicated ones. I am able to do some other stuff like backporting packages though.
The worse thing for me is logins and passwords; I often end up having different passwords on my home computer and the one at work and on my memory stick. :?
DebianStable

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$ vrms

No non-free or contrib packages installed on debian!  rms would be proud.

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