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Shell Humor

Less sucks less more than more.
That's why I use more less, and less more.

Stupid Shell Tricks

This came to me from UMass.

Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell.

% rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

% ar m God
ar: God does not exist

% "How would you rate Reagan's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

... ... ... 

Useless Use of Cat Award

Useless Use of Cat Award form letter

(Quote abomination)

And of course, if you've been following along for a week or two, you know
that this (BING!) is a Useless Use of Cat!

Rememeber, nearly all cases where you have:

        cat file | some_command and its args ...

you can rewrite it as:

        <file some_command and its args ...

and in some cases, such as this one, you can move the filename
to the arglist as in:

        some_command and its args ... file

(.signature)

---

Useless Use of Kill -9 form letter

(Quote abomination)

No no no.  Don't use kill -9.

It doesn't give the process a chance to cleanly:

1) shut down socket connections

2) clean up temp files

3) inform its children that it is going away

4) reset its terminal characteristics

and so on and so on and so on.

Generally, send 15, and wait a second or two, and if that doesn't
work, send 2, and if that doesn't work, send 1.  If that doesn't,
REMOVE THE BINARY because the program is badly behaved!

Don't use kill -9.  Don't bring out the combine harvester just to tidy
up the flower pot.

(.signature)

One of those Microsoft Moments..... (fwd)

I’ve been attending the USENIX NT and LISA NT (Large Installation Systems Administration for NT) conference in downtown Seattle this week.

One of those magical Microsoft moments™ happened yesterday and I thought that I’d share. Non-geeks may not find this funny at all, but those in geekdom (particularly UNIX geekdom) will appreciate it.

Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager (henceforth MPM), was holding forth on a forthcoming product that will provide Unix style scripting and shell services on NT for compatibility and to leverage UNIX expertise that moves to the NT platform. The product suite includes the MKS (Mortise Kern Systems) windowing Korn shell, a windowing PERL, and lots of goodies like awk, sed and grep. It actually fills a nice niche for which other products (like the MKS suite) have either been too highly priced or not well enough integrated.

An older man, probably mid-50s, stands up in the back of the room and asserts that Microsoft could have done better with their choice of Korn shell. He asks if they had considered others that are more compatible with existing UNIX versions of KSH.

The MPM said that the MKS shell was pretty compatible and should be able to run all UNIX scripts.

The questioner again asserted that the MKS shell was not very compatible and didn’t do a lot of things right that are defined in the KSH language spec.

The MPM asserted again that the shell was pretty compatible and should work quite well.

This assertion and counter assertion went back and forth for a bit, when another fellow member of the audience announced to the MPM that the questioner was, in fact David Korn of AT&T (now Lucent) Bell Labs. (David Korn is the author of the Korn shell)

Uproarious laughter burst forth from the audience, and it was one of the only times that I have seen a (by then pink cheeked) MPM lost for words or momentarily lacking the usual unflappable confidence. So, what’s a body to do when Microsoft reality collides with everyone elses?

Stupid Shell Tricks

This came to me from UMass.

Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell.

% rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

% ar m God
ar: God does not exist

% "How would you rate Reagan's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

... ... ... 

Aleeya.net - Sections

$ PATH=pretending
$ /usr/bin/which sense
no sense in pretending

$ mkdir matter
$ cat > matter
ksh: matter: cannot create

$ cat "food in cans"
cat: cannot open food in cans

$ cat "door: paws too slippery"
cat: cannot open door: paws too slippery

$ write "virgin forest"
virgin forest is not logged on.

$ man you
No manual entry for you.

$ look into "my eyes"
can't open my eyes

$ talk Marv_Albert@NBC
talk: NBC: Can't figure out network address.

$ man -kisses dog
dog: nothing appropriate

... and one that works with the C Shell (csh): 

% 'Thou shalt not commit adultery'
Thou shalt not commit adultery: Command not found