What's your mnemonic for pwd?- OMG it means print working directory. My mind instantly goes to password every time. I had to reach puddle wuv dud levels of autism before thinking otherwise. I shame my
On a side note:
I hate it that the password-change command is minimally abbreviated to "passwd".
Come on, making it much more complicated to remember and saving just two freakin letters??
But the only command that I have to look up everydamntime, although it has no abbreviation at all, is useradd.
Oh no, wait, I mean adduser!
... No, wait again... aah...
All the worse that Debian has both useradd and adduser. I never remember which is the one I want. And in Redhat-derivatives it’s something even more confusing.
The only thing I ever want to do is add a user to a group, is that too much to ask?
adduser is an interactive wrapper for useradd. It can, for example, prompt the user to set a password rather than execute passwd separately. Very useful if you just want to manage a user without reading through useradd's command line options, then running usermod because you forgot to set something.
It doesn't excuse the bad naming, I'd rather have something like useradd --interactive, but it's worth remembering.
Sure I do (although nowadays Strg-r does most of the heavy lifting for me), but as a decent touch-typist I am often faster directly typing short commands, like passwor... damn, I mean: passwd ;-)
I mean it’s basically the same thing but the command itself means “print”; it’s a damn old command and it probably predates using screens for terminals (used to be printers); which is why all the parts of Linux (ugh, and GNU of course) that came from Unix ideas came from that age.
You literally sat in front of a typewriter that would respond to you. Wild.
It absolutely can be either and is not so clear cut as responders are claiming.
Weather its 'print working directory' or 'present working directory' depends on the source you ask, and ultimately they have the same meaning so it really doesn't matter which you use.
Whenever pwd is used as a variable, 'present' is more logical than 'print'.
My kryptonite is du which reports disk usage, and df which reports disk file size, or no, wait, du is file size and df is disk usage.
Most of the time I can only remember whichever one I don't need at the moment and futilely hope that its man page will mention the other (which it doesn't).
Pretty sure it refers to a clip of the "intellectual" Ben Shapiro being afraid to say the word "pussy" when reading through the lyrics of the song and making misogynistic comments about it
I usually abbreviate these "in German" in my head. Esp. handy if there's a freaking double-U in it, which is just one syllable in German. Exception: /etc = Etsy
You might be right.
I am German and never had a problem with pwd... The "double-you" certainly breaks some easy phonetic connections you would otherwise just make...
My mnemonic is a bit weird, purrent working directory. I know the term cwd (current working directory) but I never bothered to learn what the p stands for, so I named it myself as purrent.
70 replies
On a side note:
I hate it that the password-change command is minimally abbreviated to "passwd".
Come on, making it much more complicated to remember and saving just two freakin letters??
"umount" is worse
But the only command that I have to look up every damn time, although it has no abbreviation at all, is useradd.
Oh no, wait, I mean adduser!
... No, wait again... aah...
Next update changes it to usadder as a compromise. Supposedly, it's short for "user adder" but we all know it's to make "[you] sadder".
All the worse that Debian has both useradd and adduser. I never remember which is the one I want. And in Redhat-derivatives it’s something even more confusing.
The only thing I ever want to do is add a user to a group, is that too much to ask?
adduseris an interactive wrapper foruseradd. It can, for example, prompt the user to set a password rather than executepasswdseparately. Very useful if you just want to manage a user without reading throughuseradd's command line options, then runningusermodbecause you forgot to set something.It doesn't excuse the bad naming, I'd rather have something like
useradd --interactive, but it's worth remembering.You'd want
usermodfor that, no? If the user already exists and you're just modifying their groups?@ozymandias117 @Hawke why not gpasswd?
Ah, damn it! I'll look it up next time. *sudo vim /etc/passwd*
Surely
visudo, I hopeFirst time I have to use it, the spelling really confused me. Wrote unmount and didn’t understand why it didn’t work.
I guess this also must be an additional layer of hellfire for dyslexics...
Now this looks like an interesting read. Thanks!
Kinda, but it’s pretty much all horrendously outdated bitching about superficial flaws in tools from 40 years ago.
I SAID, pass the wood
It’s the passw daemon
Do you not tab-complete your commands? I mean, my terminal usage for anything beyond very short commands consists of .
Sure I do (although nowadays Strg-r does most of the heavy lifting for me), but as a decent touch-typist I am often faster directly typing short commands, like passwor... damn, I mean: passwd ;-)
If you haven't, give fzf a try. Is like Ctrl+r in asteroids
🤷 that's why we have ls, rm, mv and hell, even w.
To confuse things even more there's a utility called pwgen and I can never remember which two letters to type before hitting autocomplete.
mv = move, thus:
That is so cool.
So
I could do this all day.
isn't it just 'present working directory'?
No. “Print working directory” is the command to print (display) the “cwd” (current working directory).
I find it weird when you get "pwd" as a variable
Kinda yeah, but I think that just comes from storing the output of the PWD command.
The system call that returns that value is called getcwd().
It's 'print current directory' in the source code:
https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/42c4578b49afaf3dc8de884262f34e4a19066860/src/pwd.c#L1
You "print" to standard output, which is the terminal.
Unless you're old-school and using a teletype as your terminal and actually printing it.
That's what I've always known it as
I mean it’s basically the same thing but the command itself means “print”; it’s a damn old command and it probably predates using screens for terminals (used to be printers); which is why all the parts of Linux (ugh, and GNU of course) that came from Unix ideas came from that age.
You literally sat in front of a typewriter that would respond to you. Wild.
This is what it is at least in my head
In my head too. We can share though.
Welp, I always thought path-to-working-directory like to get the full path
It absolutely can be either and is not so clear cut as responders are claiming.
Weather its 'print working directory' or 'present working directory' depends on the source you ask, and ultimately they have the same meaning so it really doesn't matter which you use.
Whenever pwd is used as a variable, 'present' is more logical than 'print'.
https://qmacro.org/blog/posts/2020/11/08/the-myriad-meanings-of-pwd-in-unix-systems/
pwned
My kryptonite is
duwhich reports disk usage, anddfwhich reports disk file size, or no, wait,duis file size anddfis disk usage.Most of the time I can only remember whichever one I don't need at the moment and futilely hope that its man page will mention the other (which it doesn't).
I'm always like "
dushows disk usage of files, anddfshows how much of disk is free".I just try them both every time
alias 'where_the_fuck_am_i'="pwd"
alias who_the_fuck_am_i='whoami'alias what_the_hell_is_going_on='btop'alias who_the_fuck_is_that=fingeralias finger_me='finger $USER'What the hell is wrong with all of you? Command names obviously use
-and not_alias _='-'
alias too_late='echo 😛'@cupcakezealot @DrWorm https://www.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/1i8dre3/meirl/
Unfortunately all the 2, 3 and 4 letter combinations are used as an alias for when i mistype "ls"
I thought it meant p-word. As in "wet ass p-word"
You are allowed to say pussy on the internet. Cats did nothing wrong.
"If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are."
Ah yes, everyone knows how "pwd" looks like "pussy" and definitely not "p-word".
I think you missed the WAP aka wet ass pussy song title reference in their "wet ass p-word".
Pretty sure it refers to a clip of the "intellectual" Ben Shapiro being afraid to say the word "pussy" when reading through the lyrics of the song and making misogynistic comments about it
Okay, so you did get the wordplay between pwd, pussy, and p-word in the comment.
Unless I'm really slow and I missed another joke I don't get your complaint on my joke response, sorry.
I usually abbreviate these "in German" in my head. Esp. handy if there's a freaking double-U in it, which is just one syllable in German. Exception: /etc = Etsy
I’m still not over the fact that /etc isn’t for et cetera
EDIT: turns out that it is, and that there’s a lot of dumbasses on the internet “teaching”
You might be right.
I am German and never had a problem with pwd... The "double-you" certainly breaks some easy phonetic connections you would otherwise just make...
I always called it Present Working Directory but apparently it's Print
I pronounce it pwood.
Pwud here
puh-wuh-duh
pizza with dick is how i reamber it
My mnemonic is a bit weird, purrent working directory. I know the term cwd (current working directory) but I never bothered to learn what the p stands for, so I named it myself as purrent.
I use muscle memory.
Sir this is Wendy's
I use it both for password and
pwdinterchangeably