Commandline memes

git gud

not a meme per se but I always found the command abcde confusing:

user1: How to best rip this music album??

user2: Oh simple: abcde

user1: 🤔🤔?

abcde stands for 'a better CD encoder', the more you know

alias molest="sudo touch"

And in a similar vein back when I used an arch adjacent distro I aliased pacman -R to "yeet"

Install a package with yay packagename, get rid of it with yeet packagename

Here you go: https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/unix.errors.html

(% represents the csh, $ represents the bourne shell)
 
% "How poorly would you rate the Unix (so-called) user interface?
Unmatched ".
 
% rm congressional-ethics
rm: congressional-ethics nonexistent
 
% ar m God
ar: God does not exist
 
% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].
 
% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.
 
% If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.
 
%make love
Make:  Don't know how to make love.  Stop.
 
% sleep with me
bad character
 
% got a light?
No match.
 
% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.
 
% ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.
 
% \(-
(-: Command not found.
 
% sh
 
$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending
 
$ drink <bottle; opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found
 
$ mkdir matter; cat >matter
matter: cannot create
 
 
Or, in a System V (att) universe:
 
$ cat "can of food"
cat: cannot open can of food

My go-to joke is

cat /dev/urandom | pxz | grep haxx

Or if you want to be nasty

setsid sh -c 'cat /dev/urandom | pacat -p'

As for puns, less command does the same thing as more on MS-DOS.

When you frequently type sl instead of ls. There's this nice feature to get rid of the bad habbit It sends a slow moving train accross your terminal

When I log into my Foonix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi and Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, C-h for help'' and "foo" File is read only''. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.

Ed, man!

!man ed 

ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1) 

NAME
  ed - text editor 

SYNOPSIS
  ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ] 

DESCRIPTION 
  Ed is the standard text editor. 

Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:

- -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed 
- -rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi 
- -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs 

Of course, on the system I administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

golem> ed 

? 
help 
? 
? 
? 
quit 
? 
exit 
? 
bye 
? 
hello? 
? 
eat flaming death 
? 
^C 
? 
^C 
? 
^D 
? 

Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!

When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!

When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.

Ed is for those who can remember what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!

Hollywood

$ man -k emacs
emacs: nothing appropriate.