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Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

dd is fine, at least fine as a disk destroyer can be. It is not standard for UNIX but it is understandable.

tar is a bit messy but the worst is definitely ps. It has dash and non-dash options, and they don't have the same meaning and interact in a weird way.

Edit: the command is "ps", I somehow managed to mess up the most important word...

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> tar is a bit messy but the worst is definitely the worst. It has dash and non-dash options, and they don't have the same meaning and interact in a weird way.

Sorry if it should be obvious, but "the worst is definitely the worst" … what is the worst? (Presumably not tar, unless I'm reading incorrectly.)

ps. By far the worst. Because it supports multiple syntax types I can never remember the ps command options. Even if you google for examples you get different syntax and end up with a mix of the same option letters doing different things in one command. It seems to lead to all sorts of subtly unexpected behaviors

    ps -ef | grep foo

Is what I use 98% of the time.

ps aux then pipe to grep and/or cut. Or sort. Or...

ps afx

I like the forest (tree) mode.

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