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A comment on Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer. Parent comment

Re:Everything I googled in a week as a professional software... by inimino on Friday September 06, 2019 @04:39PM (#20899675)
That is the symlink target, not the ln target, which is exactly why the "target" nomenclature is confusing. Also note that not every "ln" has a "--help" or uses that help message as the output. For example, try on OS X `/bin/ln -h`.
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Re:Everything I googled in a week as a professional software... by Rapzid on Friday September 06, 2019 @04:59PM (#20899836)
Yes, it would be platform specific as the OSX ln command would not be the same program as the GNU coreutils ln program.

For GNU ln at least I don't find it confusing at all particularly considering the only other option is LINK_NAME. I guess YMMV though and it seems kinda pointless to argue whether it is or is not confusing. Perhaps a poll could quantify it.

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Re:Everything I googled in a week as a professional software... by inimino on Friday September 06, 2019 @07:35PM (#20900817)
If "target" is used to mean two different things in the same context, it is going to confuse people! This is why naming things is hard!
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Re:Everything I googled in a week as a professional software... by Rapzid on Saturday September 07, 2019 @12:22AM (#20901763)
In GNU coreutils ln help and man page it only ever uses TARGET to refer to the link target?
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Re:Everything I googled in a week as a professional software... by inimino on Saturday September 07, 2019 @01:35AM (#20901997)
I wasn't speaking specifically about GNU. Note though that even there you see a --target-directory, -t, -T flags that make literally no sense anymore once GNU reversed the meaning of the term.
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