To really take advantage of the best tools in computing requires that you become quite comfortable with using the command line interface (CLI). In general, nearly every task — aside from graphical work itself — can be accomplished from the CLI. Once the user becomes more adept at CLI work, these non-graphical tasks can be done more quickly, with more fine-grained control, and with less demand on computer resources. Find out more, in Ed Hurst’s article.
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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How disappointed I am to see that he recommends people set LESSCHARSET to Latin-1. Unicode’s been around for over a decade, and setting it to UTF-8 solves a lot of problems. Why can’t he get with the program?
As far as i know, not every program around supports UTF-8.
Not every terminal and not every console app.
“To really take advantage of the best tools in computing requires that you become quite comfortable with using the command line interface”
CLI commands and scripting should be a very rare exception.
If your OS doesn’t provide a mature GUI that you can do 99.9% of your computing with, you should switch to a better OS at your earliest opportunity.
Oh please, of course there is a gui for almost everything, but lets say i have a template for html pages that should show a flash file and lets say i have 300 flash files, each one reqiring its own page – before i set up a gui tool to do batch processing, i have already written my two lines of bash code and finish the task…
Each to his own, but some tasks are simpler and faster without a gui (or do you want to wait for an X window to load each time you restart your apache over ssh?)
Why should CLI/scripting be rare?
Sure there are GHUI interfaces for many tasks, but that does not make them the best.
My OS does provide a mature GUI that I CAN accomplish 99.9% of my tasks through, but I often find a CLI to be a better way to acomplish them.
As mentioned, batch-processing – I can replace text in some of my directory of mixed files quite easily from CLI. I have yet to see a decent GUI tool for this.
Using a GUI you can perform the operations implemented in that GUI application. Using a CLI you can perform the operations implemented in ALL CLI commands.
F.ex. to find a system option in the controll panel of ms windows you have to click around alot until you find (or not) what you are looking for. To do the same in /etc of a Unix you just compose a grep command.
[quote]
As far as i know, not every program around supports UTF-8.
Not every terminal and not every console app.
[/quote]
cat file-in-shitty-encoding | iconv -f shitty-encoding -t utf-8 | process-non-shitty-file.
But you’re right of course, if life isn’t perfect we should all kill ourselves.
well, i think that GUI’s are good to show data but bad to receive complex commands, and CLI is the oposite.
so, the idea is to make a graphic terminal: when you run “ls” out of a pipe, you get a beautiful display of items with icons and names, or you write a command, select some items and press enter and the command is applied to selection, even you could write your scripts and store them in buttons in the terminal…
The bigger advantage of GUI’s is they’re translated to local languages. My sister has no problem with the cli system, she knows how to use, it looks like a chat, but the problem is that all commands and parameters are in english and i got no time to teach her or make aliases.
“CLI commands and scripting should be a very rare exception.
If your OS doesn’t provide a mature GUI that you can do 99.9% of your computing with, you should switch to a better OS at your earliest opportunity.”
Because as we all know, countless studies have shown that the WIMP interface is alot faster and more efficient than the CLI.
Geez, I hope you spent some Rupies on a flame deterrent suit there. Sure GUI apps are nice and all but you can’t seriously want a all GUI environment all the time. How bout those times when you’re using a plip connection, or when you just wanna edit some text files and log out?
Anyways the article was all right, nothing new here.
I’m a fan of Mr Hurst’s articles in the OfB site, eventhough I’m a Debian user and not a FreeBSD one. His articles for the ‘Clueless Computer User’ series are jewels. His articles on the text editor Joe, Pine, FreeBSD, are well written and to the point, his grammar is impeccable, and his philosophy. classy indeed. Check his copyright notice:
“COPYRIGHT NOTICE: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior — “be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23)”
…can only wonder at what kind of things can be done in a CLI setting. Batches, piping and redirection, etc. There are some GUI programs that are good for batch processing, but they have to be custom written for that particular purpose.
Also, I like ofb’s copyright notice too. The only thing is, the world is filled to overflowing with freeloading dishonorable types. I guess any further comment is just not suitable for an operating system forum/message board
Long live the CLI! PC/MS/DR-DOS, OS/2, and Linux!!
Using a GUI you can perform the operations implemented in that GUI application. Using a CLI you can perform the operations implemented in ALL CLI commands.
Rubbish.
F.ex. to find a system option in the controll panel of ms windows you have to click around alot until you find (or not) what you are looking for.
Unless, of course, you know exactly where to look and where to click.
To do the same in /etc of a Unix you just compose a grep command.
Assuming, of course, you know how to use grep, you know where to grep and you know what to grep for.
Hey, look at that ! It’s just the same either way.
isn’t it “drsmithy” again.. all assertiveness and hot air, as usual. I thought you had been told to go back to your bridge.. I’m beginning to think this guy is a “licensed” troll.
he is not the only one on osnews, i have seen atleast 3-4 that show a similar pattern…