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Documenting commands # or $ before sudo? (feditown.com)
submitted 3 years ago by exu@feditown.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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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[-] canpolat@programming.dev 12 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

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

  1. 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.
  2. # is also used for comments. I think it would be confusing to use the same character for two wildly different things.
[-] exu@feditown.com 3 points 3 years ago

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.

[-] canpolat@programming.dev 3 points 3 years ago

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

[-] exu@feditown.com 1 points 3 years 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.

this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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