Command Line Utilities: What Would Purr Do?
On the Linux Journal feed, Shawn Powers has a 2005-09-11 Video, “Commandline 101: cat, Not Just for Purring.” Of course, the Unix utility command “cat” is short for concatenate, and knowing that I never think of small furry animals when I see the term in the context of command-line operations. Silly me.
The powers journal is a nice screencast that demonstrates the versatility of this little utility, especially in conjunction with redirection (and also piping, but that probably comes in a later lesson).
Without even watching the tutorial, I was suddenly confronted with the unasked question: What would a utility named purr be good for?
My first thought was creating pleasant audios of purring felines. Then there could be command-line options to control the kind of purr, and even the kind of feline. Do lions purr?
That’s interesting, and perhaps fun, but a little too easy.
A different challenge would be to come up with a legitimate utility function for which purr would become a completely reasonable and recognizable name.
I have no idea.
To confess my advanced state of cluelessness, I also have no immediate ideas about functions named fur, fly, whine, growl, snarl, snore, whimper, etc, ditto, etc.
Labels: console scripting, cybersmith
posted by orcmid
at 5/12/2009 10:26:00 AM,
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