Hello HN: This is a a modification to an old side-project that explores what is possible when you are left with a shell and no utilities on a Linux machine.
It's not really that educational tbh. I am not a bash guru, nor do I wish to be one, so the second question left me cold with no desire to proceed any further.
It's a fun game for those with the skills, but an instructional tool it is not.
Given a set of operations, can you get to state X?
Usually requires a lot of searching and/or expertise, however the solutions will break pretty easily depending on which shell you're using, etc. So doesn't really teach you anything aside from iterating over a set of all possible operation combinations.
It's also a variation of the classic tech thought experiment/game 'If you only had X and how would you do Y?'. Like 'If all you had was telnet and had to send an email how would you do it?' or some variation of it, was a common one.
It's a fun game for those with the skills, but an instructional tool it is not.