A Word to Newcomers


Remember what they tell you at amusement park rides? 'Please keep your hands and feet inside the cart at all times!' This applies to CLIX too.

Several reviewers have cautioned users to initially steer clear of CLIX commands requiring authentication. This is good sense as without authentication you can't get near system sensitive areas.

Ultimately you will want to perform these high power commands too but you should take the time to familiarise yourself with your system - and with Unix - before you plunge in.

Every CLIX command has been vetted but this is no assurance it will work on your system as well. 'YMMV' ('your mileage may vary') applies here. You must take care to run only those commands you are confident you understand. Neither CLIX nor Unix are great places to click around and 'test' things. There's no 'undo' in Unix - or in CLIX. What's done is done.

[This would also apply to those 'GUI wrapper' utilities as they're only running Unix as well - even if they don't tell you that.]

In some cases it can be wise to test your own commands with Terminal.app. Using the Unix 'rm' ('remove') command can be merciless if you get the syntax wrong. (This is exactly what happened with the infamous install script for iTunes 2.0 - it wasn't tested and it hosed hard drives.)

Fortunately there is a way around this from the command line (Terminal.app). What you do is insert the switch '-i' to require 'rm' to operate interactively with you and prompt you for every removal to answer 'y' ('yes') or 'n' ('no'). In this way you can easily see what files are going to be removed before you remove them.

When using regular expressions ('wild cards' such as '*.txt') on the command line you might profit by first using your expressions with an innocuous command such as 'ls' which merely lists the files it finds. If after inspecting the list you feel you can proceed, simply replace 'ls' with 'rm'.

If you succeed in getting a command to work within Terminal.app, don't take a chance and type it again into CLIX - especially not if it's a sensitive command. Simply select the text in Terminal.app, invoke 'copy', and switch to CLIX and paste the text into the Command Line field.

And always check and double-check your work before committing to it.


CLIX
'Learn to Fish'
http://rixstep.com/clix

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