this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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    submitted 2 days ago by gerald_eliasweb@reddthat.com to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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    [–] forbiddencherry@lemmy.today 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

    For recursive behavior, tell me if each of these requires -r or -R (or either) without looking it up (man page, --help, web, etc):

    • chown
    • cp
    • ls
    • rsync
    • scp
    • zip
    [–] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    Also whoever decided what the tar flags will be needs to be hit with a brick, repeatedly if possible.

    [–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    without looking it up (man page, --help, web, etc):

    But why? Why would you need to do this when we have access to these tools?

    Pointless test.

    [–] craftrabbit@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Oh god oh damn my kde doesn't tell me that...

    Okay I'll give it a whirl:

    • chown: yes, I think
    • cp: no, pretty sure
    • ls: what? Like for a tree? For folder size? Idk I say yes because there's nothing recursive to me about standard ls
    • rsync: literally no clue have never used it but I'd guess no
    • scp: yes pretty confident
    • zip: yes also pretty confident

    The actual reason I barely ever find Linux annoying is because my Fedora KDE just does all I need it to pretty much all the time.

    [–] forbiddencherry@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago

    With ls you can list the contents of directories recursively. Or you can list the contents in reverse order. One of them requires a lowercase "r", one requires uppercase, but which is which? It's not such a big deal that different commands have inconsistent syntax, but even having run Linux as my primary OS since 2004, and before that Unix since 1993, I still have to look these up sometimes.

    [–] craftrabbit@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

    Aight I got cp wrong, which is kinda silly since I knew it for scp but I'm happy with that nonetheless

    [–] dadarobot@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

    without looking it up:

    chown -R

    cp -r

    ls -r

    rsync. (idk, i always google this one)

    scp -r

    zip -r

    but why not look it up? you either use a tool and arguments often enough to memorize it, or you don't.

    [–] forbiddencherry@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

    It's not about looking it up or not, it's a challenge to the boasting of the commenter above me in the context of the OP's post.

    [–] dadarobot@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

    ah yeah that's fair. but also i kinda agree with that person's response. getting frustrated with linux doesnt mean linux sucks, it means you are learning. ive been using linux for over 20 years, and i still find plenty of things that take me out of my element. and that's a good thing.

    [–] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

    -R -r -R -r -r -r I think

    ~~I don't know if this is true, but if yes, then -R is a GNU weirdness~~ No wait that doesn't make sense. ls is also GNU.

    [–] forbiddencherry@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

    Very close! -R, either, -R, -r, -r, -r. I typically think "-R except for ssh-related", but zip violates that and I'm sure there are plenty of other counterexamples too. On the topic of ssh, I still can't keep -p or -P straight (ssh vs scp).

    [–] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    Wait if cp is either, then I got it correct, right? Yay me

    [–] forbiddencherry@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago

    A couple more challenges:

    • As an unprivileged user, append multiple lines to a file owned by root, using sudo and a here document.
    • Redirect both stdout and stderr to a file using Bourne shell syntax (not bash!)
    [–] tyler@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago

    Every damn time.

    I think rsync is lowercase, and maybe zip. The rest I think are uppercase. Complete guess though.

    [–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    funny I never had this specific issue with recursive behavior. I find it obvious that only rsync and zip are recursive by default, but I'm not sure why.

    edit: ah you mean which ones are lowercase or uppercase, that makes more sense.