Timeline for Tips for remembering the order of parameters for ln?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 22, 2020 at 19:43 | comment | added | David Z | @tgm1024--Monicawasmistreated Sure, fair enough. I read it the opposite way, as "what file, and where should it be linked". This is why I say the memory aid isn't for everyone; it helps people who would naturally read it the way I do, but not people who naturally read it the way you do. | |
| Dec 22, 2020 at 19:17 | comment | added | tgm1024--Monica was mistreated | @DavidZ, well I didn't downvote you, but I read it as "what link, and where does it point" which is obviously not what you meant. ln follows the mv syntax more or less. From [usually] existing to non-existing. | |
| Sep 16, 2019 at 18:20 | comment | added | David Z | @125_m_125 The alternate interpretation you presented doesn't make much sense to me, but that's okay; this memory aid isn't for everyone. | |
| Sep 16, 2019 at 18:18 | history | edited | David Z | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 282 characters in body |
| Sep 16, 2019 at 17:19 | comment | added | Dannie | We all expect a UNIX command to include its file arguments after other kinds of argument (like grep does, for exmaple). ln creates a file of a certain type with a given contents. That the filesystem does something special and we usually put the path to some source file in it is incidental to ln. For exmaple, I could write a text editor which stored the contents of its first line in a symlink called 1, etc. This would be daft but it emphasizes that ln creates some kind of file with some text contents, nothing more or less, and makes the argument order seem logical. | |
| Sep 16, 2019 at 17:00 | comment | added | 125_m_125 | I personally think that "ln what where" is still not unambiguous without the explanation: what could either be "what is the link pointing linking at?" (correct) or "what is linking to something?" (wrong). Same with where: "where is the link pointing to?" (wrong) or "where should the link be created" (correct). So this does not necessarily help that much if you are second-guessing yourself. Remembering cp and mv should help though. | |
| Sep 15, 2019 at 14:04 | comment | added | David Z | I'm curious to get some idea of why this was downvoted. There's not much here that could be wrong - did I mix up the order or something? | |
| Sep 15, 2019 at 9:16 | history | answered | David Z | CC BY-SA 4.0 |