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by solarkraft 1279 days ago
To me it's about half way there. The things I like about it the least are the ones that are like bash ("I'd just like to interject for a moment, what you're referring to as Bash is in fact called POSIX shell").

A common argument in defense of its weirdness is that "shell scripting isn't like serious software development", but I don't understand that either.

I use shell scripts a good amount because "it's right there" is a strong argument, but in a lot of cases things that seem like they would be trivial take forever, are horribly hacky and leave me wishing I just had written a Python script right away instead.

I really don't get why people like shell scripts.
1 comments
throwaway747271 1279 days ago
People like shell scripts because you have one interface: text

For example: you need to write an image to a USB stick. Python: pretty lengthy BASH: image > /dev/SDA

Both will do exactly the same, but one is a few lines of python the other just one line in bash.

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hn92726819 1279 days ago
Why a throwaway for this? Is this a gpt response?

Also it's not right. You need to do something like image.img <cat> /dev/sda

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throwaway362651 1278 days ago
Why a throwaway? I am on my phone with no access to my real password. Don't get bothered by it?!

Did this look like a proper bash command to you?! Maybe that was some runable python code?!

File ending has nothing to do with its contents. Image.img could be an mp3.

Stop hairsplitting.

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hn92726819 1278 days ago
Not upset but I am touchy about gpt results. The ending wasn't the key part, the <cat> was the key part. I added img because that's the only image type I can think of that makes sense to write to sda in that way.

Why would anyone write an mp3 to a block device bit by bit

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all2 1279 days ago 

    dd if=<image> of=<output device> bs=<block size>
I use this whenever I need to bake an image to a USB stick.
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throwaway362651 1278 days ago
Always append status=progress and conv=fdatasync Makes sure that the buffer is flushed to disk before finishing.
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hn92726819 1278 days ago
Of course. That's the right way to do it. I was pointing out that what was written isn't right in any situation and the smallest change to make it make sense would be adding <cat> in the middle

Turns out my answer was wrong too :D. Should have been <image.img cat >/dev/sda. Oh well

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