I've been at my laptop for some hours now and I still haven't remembered what, specifically, I turned it on to do

@Zanna I could provide arbitrary guesses if you like.

Was it related to... Checking/updating a calendar? Writing a document with a word processor? Looking up how to do something? Ubuntu? History? Linguistics? Cooking? Installing updates? Social media?

Was it related to Ask Ubuntu? (If not, I can move some messages to the island.)

@EliahKagan ahaaa cooking, yes I wanted to reorganize my recipe folder. Thanks!

@Zanna Nice!

@EliahKagan I did also want to follow up on some Ask Ubuntu stuff. But, this is definitely an Island conversation :)

@EliahKagan I didn't entirely expect that to work. :)

@Zanna Yeah, I'll move messages shortly.

thanks ^_^

@EliahKagan my memory is usually pretty joggable

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@Zanna What did they say?

(If you feel like saying.)

@EliahKagan they were excited. It was stimulating. We hadn't thought of this. Yet, it seems extremely significant...

brb

Yeah, I don't know what the good resources are for green programming. I've heard the issues raised by danah boyd (in that blog post) and, in passing in an interview, by Bjarne Stroustrup, but besides that I haven't heard people talking about it in terms of the environmental impact. In terms of other factors, power usage is something that comes up fairly often, though. Like trying to write code for mobile apps that drains batteries less.

Should I edit to quote the variable expansions in this post or comment about it? I don't know what's currently considered the best practice for this.

Oh, some of them are quoted and others are not. I'll just edit.

It's still not very good. But it's much less dangerous now.

It's too complicated, rm -rf is often overkill and a risky default, exit in a function that doesn't run in a subshell exits the caller, bash doesn't have a ternary conditional operator no matter how much some people want it to, -- should probably appear as an argument before "$dir_name" in the rm and mkdir commands, and in my personal opinion it is much nicer to write && or || at the end of a line than use a backslash.

But some things are more important than others, and with the quoting added, it's unlikely to cause great harm of an unpredictable nature.

that's good

when you have something in a unit that's limited, that you can feel running out, you'll look for efficiency

The other day I was reading a recipe for beetroot salad that advised boiling the whole beets for 30-40 minutes

I immediately thought "what a waste of energy"

but I realise that I'm only thinking like this because I'm cooking with LPG that comes in a cylinder

you pay for it by the cylinder

of course you pay for piped gas based on how much you use

but because those units the gas company counts your usage in aren't physical objects, things you have to take trouble over (wheel out of their spots and sweep and mop behind, pay someone to carry to you, and above all wonder or worry about how much is left in them), it's easy to take them for granted

it reminds me of something Naomi Klein wrote in her book This Changes Everything, about how fossil fuels are really convenient

you can burn the stuff and have power whenever you want

whereas when you're trying to use solar power, for example, for all your electrical energy needs, you will need to pay attention to what the Sun is doing, how it interacts with your life

that using renewables might require working more closely with the actual environment which ultimately (and apparently very forgettably) provides all resources and processes all waste is a good thing...

rambles

it was a long time ago and I don't remember all the things my family said. But I don't think any of us have forgotten about that

@EliahKagan haha I have had fun with that lack of a ternary operator before...

why do people use the -f flag whenever they write commands with rm?

Unfortunately, the efficiency one is most motivated to look for is not always the efficiency that would decrease environmental impact, but still feels as though it is. For example, suppose a business is considering replacing its many incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent or LED bulbs. When should it replace them? Should it replace them immediately, or should it replace them as they burn out?

Non-obvious costs, like the costs associated with manufacturing and shipping, are often made harder to see, in the background of more obvious costs (or, I should say, in the background of costs that are paid by the person or company making the decision).

@Zanna Cool! :)

@Zanna Because IT MUST NOT FAIL. :)

@EliahKagan indeed. Saving money and saving energy aren't always aligned :(

rm -f is much less alarming when -r is not also passed. And it can be useful: for example, the default value of $(RM) in a makefile is rm -f.

@EliahKagan It can be very difficult to work out what the best way of doing things is because of this

@EliahKagan why is that?

@Zanna Because what $(RM) in a makefile is typically used to achieve is the absence of whatever files are being "removed," so it should still silently succeed when the files weren't there to begin with, which is one of the effects of -f. For example, make clean is often implemented with a recipe that uses $(RM).

When one runs make clean, some files that would be cleaned may not have been created. Also, make clean should be idempotent.

@EliahKagan oh right, yes I see

is there some way to move files interactively with one command?

Probably, but I'm not sure I know what you mean. Is this related to the mv -f stuff?

If you don't mind, I may move the rm messages to the island in a short while, unless it stops making sense to do so, even though they started with a question about whether an edit would be appropriate. (The conversation could continue here beforehand, and can continue there too of course!) I don't want to obscure the chatbot stuff which is very on-topic here and which others might want to see or comment on.

I need to move many of the files in a directory, but I have to make a decision for each one individually by inspecting the name. I can't move them based on anything in their metadata at all. So I am writing the same command over and over like mv foo bar Of course I'm using the up arrow and tab completion. But some of the names are long and I still have to type like, 6 chars

Oh.

so it would be better if I could run mv --prompt-me-about-every-single-file dir/* new-dir/

Would the -ok (or -okdir) action of the find command do what you need?

very probably :)

would it be too lazy to write a question about it?

@EliahKagan yes you're right, this is another Island matter... I seem to be mostly off-topic today which I'm taking as a good sign

@Zanna Not if you also answer it! :)

haha :)

Also, it would not be too lazy even if you didn't answer it.

I was going to say that you should write a question about it. But if what I've said so far actually solves the problem, you could even include it in a self-answer.

I don't entirely know what the problem is, yet, and I'm wary of pre-coordinating questions and answers especially since the island, where these messages will end up, is a obscure chat room. I'm not saying it's wrong for an asker and answerer to talk first in chat, obviously, just that I'm wary of it in the situation of high-rep users who will make the chat even more obscure at around the same time the question is posted.

OTOH maybe that's just me hand-waiving my own laziness about writing an answer. :)

hahaha you're not the only one feeling too lazy to write an answer

If I have an answer that goes beyond "use find with -ok" then I would post it thought.

Anyway, either way, I think you should post a question.

my thoughts right now are along the lines of really it's too late in the day to read man pages and I have all that laundry to put away...

I might post a question about it tomorrow. It would be nice to see what people come up with.

Ok.

> too late in the day to read man pages

thanks again for encouraging :D

@EliahKagan I have a solution for that.

info find

:)

hahaha :)

@Kulfy Definitely not a problem, especially considering that this conversation is off-topic for the downboat and I'll move it soon anyway!

@EliahKagan Getting into the island

@Kulfy If you want the full island experience then you should hold off on entering the room so that the system annoyingly invites you automatically when I move messages that include yours. (I won't move the messages about the bad disk-wiping answer, of course, which is extremely on-topic for the downboat, but I think it's reasonable to move the ones about the concurrent off-topic conversation; those messages don't make much sense once that conversation is moved, after all. :)

@EliahKagan Yeah I know. Then @Zanna sends a message there, apologies to anyone who unexpectedly got invited here. Happened 3-4 times.

Oh, actually I have to keep the "Sorry for jumping in" message here because it's about that post. But don't worry, I have other messages of yours from this conversation selected and about to be moved. :)

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@Zanna Perhaps it is also too late in the day to do batch file move operations requiring each item to be manually checked? :)

@EliahKagan definitely. I am going AFK for the day! :)

Darn, I was going to ask you about your ternary conditional experiences. All right, ttyl! :)

@EliahKagan I don't have anything interesting to say about that I think. But we can definitely try to talk about it soon haha

Indeed. Good night!