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A comment on What do Unix command names stand for?. Parent comment

Re:What do Unix command names stand for? by code_duck on Saturday June 16, 2018 @05:20AM (#17326704)
What always gets me is ssh, scp and sftp... having to specify oPort= for sftp compared to -p for ssh.
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Re:What do Unix command names stand for? by trinitry3 on Saturday June 16, 2018 @05:29AM (#17326726)
You can use -P.
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Re:What do Unix command names stand for? by kasey_junk on Saturday June 16, 2018 @08:59AM (#17327219)
Whoever made it -p in ssh & -P in scp can fuck right off.
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Re:What do Unix command names stand for? by cesarb on Saturday June 16, 2018 @11:26AM (#17327748)
The reason is that scp was designed as a secure replacement for rcp, which was designed as a remote version of cp. The flags -p and -r were inherited from cp by rcp (see https://linux.die.net/man/1/rcp), so for compatibility scp had to use the same flags.

As for ssh, I haven't looked at its history, but I suspect it's older than scp; the intuitive flag for "port" is -p, so that's what ssh used.

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Re:What do Unix command names stand for? by code_duck on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:30AM (#17330880)
Good to know. I wonder if that's a recent improvement? Last time I was doing lots of sysadmin work was 2011.
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