
What is the most crude Unix tool you've ever used? - wkoszek
Something with million dark command line switches, something that makes you cry and poop, but something that you know has the functionality you need and you&#x27;re too busy or lazy to reimplement it as a legit script. Something that makes you cringe and is ugly as one liner. Something that is super useful.
======
DrScump
_sed_ and _awk_ command strings can be quite long.

One can do a lot combining _find_ with cpio or tar to selectively extract
files for backup.

I don't consider any of this to be "crude"; I find it quite elegant.

------
qwertyuiop924
That sounds like a very deliberate description of find...

~~~
wkoszek
For some stuff I sometimes wonder if the author can actually remember the
logic behind e.g.: flags order or the syntax.

------
paulrpotts
tar has a confusing ordering of parameters (as compared to other UNIX tools)
and handling of switches. It's one of those tools that I don't use that often,
so I always have to look up examples.

I'm not the only one... see [https://xkcd.com/1168/](https://xkcd.com/1168/)

~~~
qwertyuiop924
czf, and xzf are all you really need to know most of the time. Oh, and
sometimes cjf and xjf.

------
cartman82
ln

It just does too many things. Confusing switches. Confusing order of
arguments. Easy to mess up.

Ugh.

