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A comment on Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and other bash commands. Parent comment

Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by 0942v8653 on Monday August 15, 2016 @05:31PM (#12293636)
I don't think it's really bash, more the utilities' inconsistent APIs and single-letter flags (which are not descriptive at all). Each command has its own API with different options, so it takes a lot of exposure to really learn them.
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by ktRolster on Monday August 15, 2016 @06:07PM (#12293853)
If you don't like single letter flags, most have options for longer, more descriptive flags that do the same thing. For example, you can either do:

   Make -I dir
or

   Make --include-dir=dir
Choose whichever one makes most sense.
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by gcb0 on Monday August 15, 2016 @06:28PM (#12293983)
this.

anyone who uses single letter options on a script should be punished.

single letters are for one time typing.

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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by viraptor on Monday August 15, 2016 @07:00PM (#12294169)
Single letters are sometimes more known than their full option equivalents. Quick, without a man page, what's the short alias for `tar --get` ?
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by niftich on Monday August 15, 2016 @07:01PM (#12294172)
I have no idea because I memorized 'tar zxvf' a long time ago [1] and I have to google everything else.

[1] https://xkcd.com/1597/

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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by skoczymroczny on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @10:13AM (#12297560)
I thought you'd post this one https://xkcd.com/1168/
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by vacri on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @01:46AM (#12295761)
These days tar autodetects zipfiles, and you don't usually need to see the files as they come out, so you can do 'tar xf' instead...
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by khedoros on Monday August 15, 2016 @10:46PM (#12295194)
I wouldn't use "--get". If I wanted to use the long option, I'd use "--extract".
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by voltagex_ on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @12:19AM (#12295511)
Until you find yourself on (Free)BSD, where it doesn't look like the long options are supported: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?make(1)
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by ktRolster on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @03:04PM (#12299764)
It's here: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=gmake
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Re:Extracting data from Wikipedia using curl, grep, cut and ... by vacri on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @01:48AM (#12295765)
It depends:

    .
is portable, whereas:

    source
is not... which was a surprise. :)
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