please do explain in 2 words the od command. I was looking on the page and there is only one od command and it is not explained. thank you

> please do explain in 2 words the od command

man od

You asked for two words ;).

I really didn't know about this command ... is it that bad to give me -1? ... I will never ask again here because of this and in the same time thank you you to the guys that actually lost some time to explain.

I'd like to strongly encourage you in the opposite direction, to always ask questions. Always do this, regardless of how others react.

Many younger people have security issues explaining their knowledge with others, and sometimes exhibit this as criticism and acidity. It's possible that's what happened here.

I'm reminded of http://www.huffingtonpost.com/catherine-clennan/being-a-dumb... - it highlights the importance of always asking questions regardless of the context.

It's also possible that someone disliked your use of the phrase "two words", maybe because they interpreted it literally. Some things resist explanations that are both short and accurate.

Regarding od, it's a flexible format conversion tool that lets you convert arbitrary data to hexadecimal, octal and C escaped printable text. I use it a lot!

The nicest article in a wile now .. :) thank you for it and for the extra explanation on od :)

No problem :)

(PS. gia-web looks interesting)

:) no it doesn't. I've send you an email

Similar to "cat". But it shows the contents of a file in octal. try...

echo hello | od

echo hello | od -c

Useful when you want to figure out the real contents of a file.

"octal dump"

(can also dump characters and hexadecimal)