
Ubuntu command line fu - How not to spell "ls" - LiveTheDream
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/en/man6/sl.6.html
======
ars
Just in case you feel left out:

    
    
                              (  ) (@@) ( )  (@)  ()    @@    O     @     O     @      O
                         (@@@)
                     (    )
                  (@@@@)
    
                (   )
            ====        ________                ___________
        _D _|  |_______/        \__I_I_____===__|_________|
         |(_)---  |   H\________/ |   |        =|___ ___|      _________________
         /     |  |   H  |  |     |   |         ||_| |_||     _|                \_____A
        |      |  |   H  |__--------------------| [___] |   =|                        |
        | ________|___H__/__|_____/[][]~\_______|       |   -|                        |
        |/ |   |-----------I_____I [][] []  D   |=======|____|________________________|_
      __/ =| o |=-~~\  /~~\  /~~\  /~~\ ____Y___________|__|__________________________|_
       |/-=|___|=O=====O=====O=====O   |_____/~\___/          |_D__D__D_|  |_D__D__D_|
        \_/      \__/  \__/  \__/  \__/      \_/               \_/   \_/    \_/   \_/

~~~
code_duck
I was feeling left out....

"The program 'sl' is currently not installed.

You can install it by typing:

sudo apt-get install sl"

What's the point if I have to know about it and explicitly install it? Kind of
ruins the surprise, but I guess I can set it up for unsuspecting others...

~~~
jrockway
_What's the point if I have to know about it and explicitly install it?_

 _I can set it up for unsuspecting others._

~~~
aguynamedben
your sysadmins should have taken care of this =)

------
nuclear_eclipse
This has been around long enough that it was on the old Solaris workstations I
used at my last job. Except on the Solaris boxes it actually made a very loud
and obnoxious steam whistle noise to go with the animation, just to make sure
everyone in the office _knew_ that you mistyped `ls`. Turning down the volume
didn't even work because it specifically sent the audio to the hardware
speaker securely located inside the case.

Needless to say, I quickly added `alias sl=ls` to my .alias as soon as the
embarassment subsided.

------
dimarco

        BUGS
           It rarely shows contents of current directory.

~~~
zck
I hope that it actually performs an _ls_ at a 1/10 probability -- just enough
so that people will see it once in a while, but not enough to be relied on.

------
samstokes
Along similar lines, a company I used to work for had a command-line tool
called "metalink". If you mistyped it as "meatlink", your screen would fill
with an ASCII-art rendering of the Japanese kanji meaning "meat", along with
the legend "meatlink - the tastier alternative to metalink". (It would then go
on to invoke metalink.)

------
hugh3
Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever typed "sl" instead of ls. (In fact I had
a great deal of difficulty correctly typing sl there.)

Hypothesis: the typo "sl" is only common among left-handers.

~~~
paulgb
I'm right-handed, and I make the typo all the time, to the point that I've
aliased it. I think it's that I type it so quickly (both keys are in the "home
row") that each key goes down at about the same time.

~~~
hugh3
OK, I shall consider my hypothesis sufficiently falsified.

------
mseebach

      $ sl
      The program 'sl' is currently not installed.  You can  install it by typing:
      sudo apt-get install sl
    

I deeply appreciate that this is the case, even though it's drastically
defeating the purpose of showing something when ls is misspelled.

~~~
Dunearhp
It was installed by default on one of my old debian boxes. The first time I
stumbled upon it I felt like I was in the twilight zone. It took some time to
realize what it was.

------
Oompa
`brew install sl` if you want it on OS X.

~~~
philwelch
`[sudo] port install sl` works too, if you're still on MacPorts.

~~~
heatdeath
"Still on" and intend to stay on.

~~~
masklinn
You and me both, still fighting the good fight \n/

------
mtomczak
I'm sure I'll get accused of having no sense of humor, but I have to observe
that from a usability standpoint, this is unhelpful. It gives me no clue as to
what I've done wrong, it wastes my time, and it offers me no help in
correcting my behavior. I might install this on my personal machine for fun,
but as a system administrator I have no business touching this.

Responding to invalid input by actively mocking the user is about the worst
decision you can make for discoverability. It's this kind of user interface
thinking that can lead to a toolchain being rejected regardless of how
powerful or useful the tools could be.

~~~
asjo
It is, though, kind of fun.

------
AlexMax
I wonder if there is an equivalent for somebody who misspells ls -l as ls- l.
That's one that nails me quite a bit, and all I can do is grumble as it takes
few seconds for bash to realize that no, that's not a valid command anywhere
in the system.

~~~
gaius
My pet hate is :Wq, if that isn't a valid command anyway, would there be any
harm in simply making it :wq quietly? Damn pedants.

~~~
tyweir
map :W<cr> :w<cr> map :Wq<cr> :wq<cr>

That hopefully helps.

~~~
gaius
Nice :-)

------
ComputerGuru

       zsh: correct 'sl' to 'ls' [nyae]? n
    

And only then do I get my choo-choo train. :)

<3 zsh :)

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wipt
Odd that it came from Debian, yet it seems to have found it's home with ubuntu

~~~
krakensden
You realize that most of Ubuntu's packages come straight from Debian, right?

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ra88it
I've known about this for awhile, but I didn't realize it had flags. -F is
awesome!

However, I can't kill it will ctrl-c even when I set the -e flag. Is that
supposed to be part of the joke?

~~~
hurfadurf
Ctrl-\ will kill it (in case you didn't know about that one).

------
ErrantX
I usually type ld by accident...

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rw-
this has absolutely nothing to do with ubuntu. ubuntu != gnu/linux.

~~~
varjag
Nor it has anything to do with Gnu/Linux for that matter. The command's older
than your grandma.

------
Tombar
So `ubuntish`

