In a message dated: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 11:38:42 PST Ken Ambrose said:
>Tsk, tsk, Paul: I expect you to know all three ways (that I can think >of, at least) to override that: > >\rm * >and >rm -f * >and >yes | rm * I forgot about that last one :) Of course, I doubt I'd ever have occasion to use it, since I'm lazy and -f does the same thing ;) >I do find that they are hugely helpful for misc. things >that one uses all the time -- and, if you're using the *same* command all >the time, what good is typing it really going to do you in terms of >learning it? Good point. However, I was more thinking in terms of those who decide to alias certain commands like ls = 'ls -F'. This type of alias, IMO, is the most dangerous, since you're now masking a real command. Better to create a completely new command, 'lF' instead. This allows you to remember that 'ls' is the command, and it's output is nothing more than a list of file names and ls -F gives you the identifying characters at the end of the command. IMO, it's a very dangerous practice to alias real command names to some action which is not their normal behavior. >It's only when you do things differently that you learn; >otherwise, it might as well be an alias. Lastly, Well, yes and no. If you prefer to always see the file type characters at the end of a filename and you alias ls to be ls -F, then when you move to another system where that alias doesn't exist, and you get output completely different than what you expect, you may either waste your time trying to remember what all your aliases are, or, you may now need to clean up a mess you shouldn't have because of default behavior you've forgotten about and therefore didn't expect. This leads to the premise that you also learn even when you always do things exactly the same all the time. It's just completely unexpected and probably surprising learning :) (Note. Obviously aliasing ls to ls -F won't cause you major system damage. It's just an example. Dangerous things to alias are things like rm, cp, and mv. Though tar, find, and many others can be problematic too. And I've already demonstrated how aliasing ls to something else can be problematic for command-line shell scripts.) >alias files from more learned users are frequently handy ways of >showing newbies how things are done. Hmmmm, true, but more often than not alias files, and .[a-z,ba]shrc files, etc. are usually a very bad thing to be handing on from one person to another. People in general never comment them, and what you end up with are people who now don't know how or why something works the way it does, and when something on the system changes, they haven't the slightest idea why what always worked before is now broken. Case in point, I couldn't get Xv4 working on my system last week exactly because I copied someone elses config file without really understanding what it was doing. I, of all people, should have known better! I finally got X working again with my flat panel and all it took was about 1 solid hour of futzing with modelines and such until it worked. Most people don't want to spend that much time figuring out how a config file works. Which is why I hate aliases. They tend to lead to people who don't have a clue as to how the tools they need to use to get their jobs done work. You wouldn't catch a carpenter who didn't know all the ins and outs of his skill or miter saw (and if you did, he probably has a few less than 10 fingers :) Yet people in high-tech seem to think they can get away without learning how their OS works. No wonder MS is where they are! In general though, the Linux crowd does seem a lot better than the averagee Unix user I've dealt with over the years. Since it's predominately made up of people using Linux on their own at home, they've had little choice but to figure things out on their own. However, once Linux makes it's way deeper into the corporate world, I fully expect to see more of what I've previously been exposed to :( ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
