Ask HN: Why do readmes still use $ in copy-pasteable commands?

3 pointsgaryfirestorm4 comments

I often encounter this in docs/readmes `$ ls -lt` often renders with a copy button that you can easily click and when you paste it in terminal it shows up as `$ ls -lt` with an unnecessary $ causing an error $ command not found or something like that... wouldn't it make sense to just have `ls -lt` and not add the $ in front of it?

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The "$" prompt is shorthand to indicate the command is run as a non-root user. If you see "# ls -lt" that indicates the command should be run as root. The problem lies with whoever set up the copy button to include the prompt as part of the copied command.

this is a widespread problem - many libraries, git repos follow this convention unfortunately

How do you specify this on GitHub markdown?

It's used in documentation mostly to distinguish the command from stdout. And it's verbatim what you see if you copy-paste from most default bash shells.

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