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Do not use redirection characters in your shell prompt

(tanelpoder.com)
217 points tanelpoder | 2 comments | 17 Mar 21 14:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.475s | source
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jandrese ◴[17 Mar 21 15:32 UTC] No.26492618[source]▶
This seems to be more of "don't paste garbage into a terminal, especially as root." With a sidenote that it might be safer if your custom application command interpreter didn't use > as the prompt character. I note that Bourne shell defaults to the safer % and # characters for the prompt. The # character for root is especially safe.
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rcarmo ◴[17 Mar 21 15:42 UTC] No.26492739[source]▶
Yeah. About the only relevant bit is that root prompts tend to use # as part of their prompt precisely to inject a comment character in case of mis-quotes/pastes.
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minitoar ◴[17 Mar 21 15:51 UTC] No.26492855[source]▶
Wow I never heard that! I always thought it was just some arbitrary convention I guess.
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nemosaltat ◴[17 Mar 21 18:21 UTC] No.26494966[source]▶
This is why I hang out here!

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1053/

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reaperducer ◴[17 Mar 21 18:43 UTC] No.26495236[source]▶
This is getting to be a tired meme.

While it doesn't apply to shell prompts, there are such things as cultural memory and institutional memory. As a member of a group or society, you are expected to have a certain baseline amount of knowledge of that culture and history.

When I was young, it was considered shameful not to know things. Now the people I work with seem to wear ignorance as a badge of pride. They think that not knowing something means that thing is not worth knowing. As if somehow not knowing something is a good thing.

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1. inopinatus ◴[17 Mar 21 20:07 UTC] No.26496178[source]▶
There’s a huge gulf between admitting you don’t know something, and being proud of it.

Suggesting it was ever, or should be, somehow “shameful” to admit not knowing something, is an enemy of change and growth, and in everyday life becomes a recipe for perpetuating structural in-groups and all the systemic pathologies that go along with them.

I am also grumpy old fart but I was raised in an engineering culture that was not afraid to ask “what’s a spline?”, and I don’t regret it.

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2. macintux ◴[17 Mar 21 20:47 UTC] No.26496597[source]▶
I don't mind at all when someone admits they don't know something important at work.

I'm frustrated when they admit it 6 months too late.

Ignorance is the norm, but fix it when it's necessary, don't try to hide it.