Welcome to eXamPLeS or eXample PLeaSe

I’ve used curl at various times over the years. Yet I still have trouble remembering how to pass request headers. Sure my memory is getting worse, but the number of tools that we depend on keeps growing. Many we only use periodically, which means there is a non-zero switching cost when we have to relearn the exact options we need to pass and the specific format they have to be in. We pay a price every time. If it’s been too long since our last use of the tool, we have to pay the toll again.

In some ways this is really a caching problem. For a given size cache you can only hold so much information in your head. As you acquire new info, some will be removed from the cache in a LRU (least recently used) order. When the info is not in cache, you have to look it up from source.

Manpages is a great source. Many will document every single button, switch and knob available on the tool.That means they will be many pages long. Common options will be mixed in with very obscure ones. Finding the several different options you need is difficult and time consuming.

Most people just use their favorite search engine. Maybe they’ll find a blog post or get taken to a stackoverflow question. But the results are mixed. Sometimes you get exactly what you need and other times not so much.

So I decided to make a site with common examples of various tools. These are ones I use. The examples should handle the 80% cases. If you have an edge case, you’ll have to consult the manpage. But if you fall into that sweet spot – well, this should be better.

Go to tools to see examples for any given tool. Check out our blog posts for whatever I feel like writing about.