[Tutor] What are all those letters after terminal commands?

[William R. Wing (Bill Wing)]

On Aug 23, 2012, at 12:59 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

> On 23/08/12 23:18, Cecilia Chavana-Bryant wrote:
> [...]
>> I found this command:
>> mkdir -p i/like/icecream. I am guessing that the -p stands for directory
>> path?
> 
> Ha, that's the trouble with command line interfaces -- they tend to end up
> being cryptic and painfully terse. In this case, -p actually stands for
> "parents", in the sense that mkdir is trying to create the folder "icecream"
> inside the parent folder "like", inside the grandparent folder "i". If any
> of the parent folders are missing, the -p option says to create the missing
> folders.
> 
> I don't want to put you off learning about the command line, because
> knowledge is good. I've never learned something and then thought "I wish
> I was more ignorant". But honestly, you don't need to be a command line
> expert to make use of Python's interactive interpreter. To get started,
> all you need is one command:
> 
> python
> 
> 
> and then press the ENTER key. That brings up Python's interactive
> interpreter, which uses Python syntax rather than the shell's rather
> cryptic commands and options.
> 

While all that is true, I'm pretty sure she is going to need enough knowledge of the simplest -NIX commands to edit .py files, rename them occasionally, organize them into appropriate directories ('/working', '/development', and '/archive' as possible examples), and occasionally change a permission or two (-x for example).  Ultimately, she will need to be able to examine her .profile (remember, she is running OS-X) file and possibly edit it.  Finally, there are at least a few things that can be done most expeditiously, even in python, by spawning a python subtask and running a UNIX command there.

I agree that she may never need to do shell programming (OS-X uses bash), but knowing the basics WILL be needed.

-Bill

> (Of course, the python command also takes a bunch of optional, and
> useful. command switches, but you can learn them as you go.)
> 
> By all means continue with the command line book if you are getting
> something useful out of it, but don't think you *have* to learn the
> shell in order to use Python. The two are independent.
> 
> 



> 
> -- 
> Steven
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