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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Documenting commands # or $ before sudo? (feditown.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This might be a stupid question, but hear me out.
I regularly document steps to install various software for myself on my wiki
More recently, I managed to use different custom text in the source markdown to prepend # and $ automatically, so commands can be copied more easily while still clarifying if it should be run as a normal user or as root.

Run command as user

$ some cool command

Run command as root/superuser with sudo

# some dangerous command

I usually remove and sudo and use the # prefix. However, in some cases, the sudo actually does something different that needs to be highlighted. For example, I might use it to execute a command as the user www-data

sudo -u www-data cp /var/www/html/html1 /var/www/html/html2

I often use $ as a prefix, but # would also make sense.
How would you prefix that line?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't work much with Linux systems these days, but I would vote for $ sudo over #. Two reasons:

It's easy to overlook the prompt. That part is basically "some characters before the actual command", so I don't normally pay attention to it.
# is also used for comments. I think it would be confusing to use the same character for two wildly different things.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So $ sudo in general any time I need to run something as root?
I'll have to think about that some more. I think I rather dislike "forcing" sudo on all commands as root.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, maybe I misunderstood your question. I though you were proposing # instead of $ sudo and I meant to say that being explicit is better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I typed the post in a minute and published, so it definitely isn't the most coherent or well thought out post.
I'm currently using # for commands executed by the root user or sudo.
Currently, I only use sudo if the command depends on one of its features. Like the example above where I execute a command as the www-data user.
My dilemma was whether to use $ sudo or # sudo for those few cases. But based on yours and other comments, it might make sense to use $ sudo for commands executed as root as well.