* Cecilia Chavana-Bryant <cecilia.chav...@gmail.com> [2012-08-23 14:18]: > mkdir -p i/like/icecream. I am guessing that the -p stands for directory > path? I have seen other such letters sometimes with or without the ' - ' > before them (I think) in commands so my question is, what are these letters > for? what are they called? and could someone please point me to where I can
They are called commandline options. Most programs allow you to use options to change the behavior of the program "on the fly." In this particular case, mkdir creates a directory, while mkdir -p means "make the directory and any parent directories that do not already exist. For example: If i/like/icecream does not exist, we try to create it with mkdir: mkdir i/like/icecream The result will be an error if i or i/like does not exist yet: mkdir: i/like: No such file or directory So we use -p, to also create the parent directories: mkdir -p i/like/icecream To learn about options that are available for a given command, try using the "man" command like so: man mkdir It will give you a list of options, what they do, and how to use them. In general, there are two things you can use on a commandline, options and arguments. Options are the switches that change the program's behavior and arguments are the inputs to the program (filenames, etc). -- David Rock da...@graniteweb.com _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
