Shell Game: Fun for command-line geeks
As everyone knows, few things in life are more annoying than people who email you those daily funnies that come their way. (See further, “How the delete key is your friend”).
Having said that, if you ever find yourself doing things at the command-line, you may enjoy what follows the jump. Terminal-heads only, this way please…
% make ‘heads or tails of all this’
Make: Don’t know how to make heads or tails of all this. Stop.
% make sense
Make: Don’t know how to make sense. Stop.
% make mistake
Make: Don’t know how to make mistake. Stop.
% make bottle.open
Make: Don’t know how to make bottle.open. Stop.
% make love
Make: Don’t know how to make love. Stop.
% got a light?
No match.
% sleep with me
bad character
% man: Why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.
% rm God
rm: God nonexistent
% \(-
(-: Command not found.
% rm -i God
rm: remove God? y
% ls God
God not found
% make light
Make: Don’t know how to make light. Stop.
% date me
You are not superuser: date not set
Thu Aug 25 15:52:30 PDT 1988
% If I had a ) for every dollar Reagan spent, what would I have?
Too many )’s.
% * How would you describe George Bush
*: Ambiguous.
% %Vice-President
%Vice-President: No such job.
% ls Meese-Ethics
Meese-Ethics not found
% “How would you rate Reagan’s senility?
Unmatched “.
% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].
% ^How did the^sex change operation go?
Modifier failed.
% cp /dev/null sex;chmod 000 sex
% more sex
sex: Permission denied
% who is my match?
No match.
% set i=”Democratic_Platform”;mkdir $i;chmod 000 $i;ls $i
Democratic_Platform unreadable
% awk “Polly, the ship is sinking”
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: bailing out near line
% ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’
thou shalt not commit adultery: Command not found.
And from the bourne shell (sh):
$ drink < bottle;opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found
$ test my argument
test: too many arguments
$ “Amelia Earhart”
Amelia Earhart: not found
$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!
$ mkdir “Yellow Pages”;fiYellow Pages
$ mkdir matter;cat > matter
matter: cannot create
$ lost
lost: not found
$ found
found: not found
$ i=Hoffa ;>$i ;$i ;rm $i ;rm $i
Hoffa: cannot execute
rm: Hoffa nonexistent
The following are ones that I can’t get to work on my BSD 4.3, so I suppose that they are stuff from ATT SysV or some other such:
% sccs what bottle
can’t open bottle (26)
$ cat “door: paws too slippery”
can’t open door: paws too slippery
$ cat food_in_tin_cans
cat: can’t open food_in_tin_cans
Now that you are suitably inspired, sally forth to the Terminal and create your own witty banter.
[From the AppleScript Uers mailing list 
]
, command-line, humor, jokes, humour
July 1st, 2006 at 12:54 am
Wow, how old is that? Reagan, Bush, Meese. This must qualify as the oldest joke email still circulating. We’re talking mid-80s here.
July 1st, 2006 at 3:25 am
Note lines:
You are not superuser: date not set
Thu Aug 25 15:52:30 PDT 1988
July 1st, 2006 at 11:21 am
Ah, I see. It was new to me, but I see that it is classic comedy.
July 1st, 2006 at 6:05 pm
it would be funny if they worked; most of them don’t. And yes, I used csh.
July 1st, 2006 at 8:57 pm
I remember trying all of the commands back in 1996 or so, and I think most of them worked back then. Perhaps the implementation of csh has changed a bit since then.
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:55 am
It’s not that they don’t work, exactly, but that they’ve changed. Eg:
Mithril$> drink csh
Mithril$> markian% make sense
make: *** No rule to make target `sense’. Stop.
Mithril$> markian% make bottle.open
make: *** No rule to make target `bottle.open’. Stop.