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RTFM is Sage (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 4 days ago by miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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[-] noxypaws@pawb.social 2 points 3 days ago

BS. I've been using linux for over 20 years and I still don't know what those mean. I can only guess from context. It's a stupid convention to just use symbols like that and never explain it.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Read the man manpage and all will be revealed.

[-] noxypaws@pawb.social 3 points 3 days ago

Following the openbsd example from the original comment I replied to, it has absolutely nothing to say about what brackets mean, so this advice would not be helpful for an openbsd system: https://man.openbsd.org/man

On my personal linux system (arch derivative, by the way), it at least mentions brackets meaning optional, but only in the context of arguments:

   [-abc]             any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.

I think this would trip up some new users. The destination, with or without the username to connect as, may not seem like an "argument" to a new user since it doesn't have a dash before it like the example does

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

this advice would not be helpful for an openbsd system

Sorry, I wasn't aware of that. BSD usually has excellent ~~pan~~ man pages.

Here's the relevant section in the Linux one:

The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used as a guide in other  sections.

       **bold text**          type exactly as shown.
       *italic text*        replace with appropriate argument.
       [-abc]             any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
       -a|-b              options delimited by | cannot be used together.
       argument ...       argument is repeatable.
       [expression] ...   entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.

The destination, with or without the username to connect as, may not seem like an “argument” to a new user since it doesn’t have a dash before it like the example does

Then the new user should real the ssh manpage which very clearly specifies that it is.

this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
1720 points (100.0% liked)

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