Nextanswer 1088 How to speak Unix

[ptek]

1088 tips and techniques (Bulletin 92 Spring)
How to speak UNIX

When Technical Support Hotline subscribers contact NeXTedge Technical Support by phone, we need to communicate a lot of information to you, and you need your questions answered as quickly as possible. During a typical call, it's easy to spend a great deal of time communicating words like fstab, exportfs, and fsck. To circumvent the problem of communicating UNIX jargon--such as, special characters, keys, file names, and commands--pronunciation conventions have developed. This article lists many of the most frequently used terms and procedures you're likely to hear on a call to support.

• When specifying a pathname, we don't pronounce the slashes between the pathname components. For example, /usr/template/client/etc is pronounced ``user template client etcetera.''
• Because case is significant, we typically indicate when a character in a file name is uppercase.

• When entering a long file name in a shell, it isn't usually necessary to type every character in the name. You can use the shell's file-expansion capability. For example, suppose you need to type /usr/template/client/etc/netinfo. In the shell, all you need to type is:
  
  /u<Esc>/te<Esc>/c<Esc>/e<Esc>/neti<Esc>The shell completes each file name when you press Esc (emacs edit mode users need to press Esc twice).

• We generally don't specify spaces for command arguments. For example, we pronounce ls-lg as ``l s dash l g.''

Table 1 lists common conventions for pronunciation. Your familiarity with these conventions will allow us to help you more quickly.
Table 2 illustrates the conventions for telling you how to perform procedures.
table 1: characters, file names, and commands
 
character pronunciation
/ slash
! bang
# pound
| pipe
. dot or period
* star, asterisk, or wildcard
~ tilde or twiddle
- dash
$ dollar
& ampersand
file name pronunciation
/etc et-see, E-T-C, or etcetera
/etc/passwd password
/etc/exports exports
/etc/fstab F-S tab
/etc/hosts hosts
/etc/hostconfig host config
/usr user
/usr/adm user A-D-M
/usr/adm/lpd-errs user A-D-M L-P-D errors
/tmp temp
/dev dev
/tmp temp
/dev dev
command pronunciation
cat cat
exportfs export F-S
fsck fisk or F-S-C-K
ifconfig I-F config or ifconfig
ls list or L-S
ls -lag L-S dash L-A-G
niutil N-I U-til
nidump N-I dump
ping ping
su sue or S-U
sync sink

 table 2: how to perform procedures
 
Pull up a console.
Choose Console from the Workspace Tools menu.

Run rc in the background.
In single-user mode, type /bin/sh /etc/rc & at the ``#'' prompt.

R-login into the machine name.
In a Terminal window, type rlogin name.

Type Command-tilde.
Hold down the Command key on the right side of the keyboard and then press the tilde key (don't press the Shift key--you're actually using the backquote key) in the upper-left corner of the numeric keypad.

Type Command-Command-tilde.
Hold down both Command keys and then press the tilde key (backquote key).

Type Command-Alt-star.
Hold down the Command and Alternate keys on the left of the keyboard and then press the asterisk key in the upper right corner of the numeric keypad.

Halt the machine.
As root, type the UNIX command halt in a Terminal window.

List what file systems are mounted.
Type the command df or mount in a Terminal window.

Boot the machine single user.
Type bsd -s in the ROM monitor window.

[ptek]

I won't lie this is the first time I've seen the ! (exclamation mark) been refered to as bang and the ~ been referred to as a twiddle.

[ZombiePhysicist]

I won't lie this is the first time I've seen the ! (exclamation mark) been refered to as bang and the ~ been referred to as a twiddle.

Def referred to as bang within NeXT. I recall being surprised at that as well.

[Rhetorica]

They're very peculiar to the US Northeast hacker culture. Both bang and twiddle are mentioned in the Jargon file:

http://catb.org/jargon/html/T/twiddle.html
http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bang.html

I would say bang is definitely the better-known one, used in such terms as "bang path" (UUCP path) and "shebang" (#! at the start of shell scripts)

[ptek]

Def referred to as bang within NeXT. I recall being surprised at that as well.

  I guess Rob would know.

They're very peculiar to the US Northeast hacker culture. Both bang and twiddle are mentioned in the Jargon file:

http://catb.org/jargon/html/T/twiddle.html
http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bang.html

I would say bang is definitely the better-known one, used in such terms as "bang path" (UUCP path) and "shebang" (#! at the start of shell scripts)

  First I have ever heard of shebang for #!. But thanks for providing thos links Rhetorica. I was wondering if I should have put this in the general section near the rules but I guess you are talking about software...