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[–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Agreed, and I think a larger part of it is that most folks pick it up based on context after long enough, so it's rarely explained. The square brackets are optional arguments. So I could use ssh 192.168.1.1 or ssh postimo@192.168.1.1 with the first asking for the account after I connect, and the second just asking for the password. You can see how the computer took it in the response you got. hostname ]192.168.1.1 being it saw the @ and assumed everything after was the hostname and included the ]

It's worth noting that you can't just connect to a random machine like this, they need to also be running an ssh server. But I wouldn't expect you to know that without reading a great deal more of the documentation 🫠

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I've been using ssh for decades, you don't have to explain it to me. It was a purely contrived example to simulate what I think a new user might experience if faced with that particular man page as their only documentation.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Oh my mistake, I didn't mean to demean at all. Yeah I think even in your example there are baked in knowledge we've picked up that we don't realize, and that a very likely response from fully fresh eyes would seeing the synopsis is "oh this isn't for me."

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    No worries, didn't feel demeaned but wanted to be clear that it was an attempt to try to ignore ~23 years of ssh muscle memory to try to guess what might trip up a new Linux user

    Very much true in my case - I couldn't explain what the, like.. "idiomatic" meaning of those brackets is, I only guess from context and experience, and it remains a minor peeve of mine that such symbology is widely used but rarely explained

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