FactChecker said:
People who have never programmed on Unix/Linux machines can not appreciate the huge benefits of their command line. For instance, using the history file to record every command and have reliable, repeatable processes is a capability that is long gone from Windows.
Yeah. Linux's CLI is simply a ton of small programs all doing one specific task really well. In this context the pipe (|) command is ingenius. Piping output from one program to the next is nothing short of brilliant, a couple of simple examples but the sky is the limit:
history | grep sudo | less
apropos internet | less
Also,
find is a stroke of brilliance:
find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec mv {} ~/{}_backup \;
When I for worked for Maersk Data (now IBM), a system admin was told to backup all files between two specific dates. I was then told to feed them to a program, which was simply a matter of moving them to a folder where a program would then process them. I wrote a "simple" find command to find the files matching the date interval and moving them to the folder.
The sysadmin came back with somewhat of a smirk on his face and told my boss (not me, like a good coworker might) that my "command didn't work". I told my boss, with complete confidence, that if it didn't work then
they effed something up. His face cracked into a smile, fetched a jester's hat (complete with bells and everything!) standing on one of my coworker's table (12 man offices. This jester's hat I learned there and then was an internal joke which got placed on the table of the latest person to do something stupid. So, understandably, he was happy to get it out of his office!).
When we entered the other office he led me to the sysadmin who in the meantime had returned to his place and we proceeded to find the explanation:
The i.... had
copied the files (giving them all new dates) instead of packaging them using a zip-tool or similar preserving their dates. So a bunch of containers somewhere had in effect "vanished" in thin air!
My boss then dumped the hat on the sysadmin's table, waved to the boss of that office and dragged me back to our own office. He was beaming for the rest of that day. Pretty harsh environment. :)
