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Quiz about Jokes That the C Shell Told Me
Quiz about Jokes That the C Shell Told Me

Jokes That the C Shell Told Me Quiz


The Unix C Shell (CSH) was developed by the famous Bill Joy. This quiz is a joyful one indeed. Knowledge of CSH is NOT a pre-requisite. Sit back and prepare yourself for a good laugh from the erratic responses CSH can produce, a Unix folklore by now.

A multiple-choice quiz by gentlegiant17. Estimated time: 8 mins.
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Time
8 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
266,987
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
15
Difficulty
Difficult
Avg Score
7 / 15
Plays
1117
Last 3 plays: Buddy1 (12/15), Guest 173 (5/15), Guest 69 (6/15).
Question 1 of 15
1. The standard Unix command for removing a file or a directory is "rm".

Assuming that your current working directory does not have a file named "God", how will CSH respond to you issuing the command "rm God"?
Hint


Question 2 of 15
2. At the CSH prompt, you typed "!:sugar's not healthy, how about saccharine?".

CSH responds by "Bad substitute."


Question 3 of 15
3. CSH is also a witty commentator on the political state of affairs.

What is CSH's answer to the following query:

"If I had a ( for every unnecessary $ the Government spends, what would I have in hand?"
Hint


Question 4 of 15
4. You have an extremely idle and non-productive colleague called John Doe. You could always check if CSH agrees with your view. All you need to do is ask it.

Which of the following would be the response to your question below?

"How would you rate John Doe's incompetence?
Hint


Question 5 of 15
5. A standard Unix command for program compilation is "make".

You try to compile a non-existing program, typing "make love" at the CSH command prompt.

What happens next?
Hint


Question 6 of 15
6. Ask CSH "[ Where is Jimmy Hoffa?".

What is the answer?
Hint


Question 7 of 15
7. A standard Unix command used to display the contents of a file is "cat".

You try to display a non-existent file named "food in cans" by typing in "cat 'food in cans'".

What is the funny outcome?
Hint


Question 8 of 15
8. "nice" is a Unix command which manipulates command priorities.

What happens when you type in "nice dog - sit down!"?


Hint


Question 9 of 15
9. "man" is a standard Unix command which invokes the manual pages of the requested command (e.g. "man rm" displays the manual pages for "rm").

What is the response to "man sex"?
Hint


Question 10 of 15
10. Is the following CSH sequence real (t) or was it made up by me (f)?

man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.


Question 11 of 15
11. A standard Unix command which directs the operating system to halt its operation for the specified amount of time is "sleep" (e.g. "sleep 5" will halt the shell for 5 seconds).

The "sleep" command expects only numeric character(s) as an argument.

Fill in the response to "sleep 1_night_with_me!".

sleep: --- --------- in argument

Answer: (Two words (3,9), no capitals)
Question 12 of 15
12. Job control is one of the features which CSH introduced into the Unix shell world and it has been incorporated to all major shells. The percent symbol is used to refer to a job. What is the response to a user trying to refer to a non-existing job, as in "%blow"?

Answer: (Three words (2,4,3))
Question 13 of 15
13. After typing a certain CSH command line, I received the following response:

"Modifier failed."

What was the command line?
Hint


Question 14 of 15
14. "ar" is a standard Unix command for creating and manipulating file archives.

If a user wants to add or replace files in an archive named "A", he should issue the command "ar r A".

How does CSH react when a user issues the command "ar r Money", given that an archive named "Money" does not exist in the current working directory?
Hint


Question 15 of 15
15. What's the laconic response to following CSH command line:

"You were great tonight, can you please light me a cigarette before sleep?"
Hint



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Most Recent Scores
Mar 07 2024 : Buddy1: 12/15
Feb 09 2024 : Guest 173: 5/15
Feb 03 2024 : Guest 69: 6/15

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quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. The standard Unix command for removing a file or a directory is "rm". Assuming that your current working directory does not have a file named "God", how will CSH respond to you issuing the command "rm God"?

Answer: rm: God non-existent

An unexpected theological statement from a mere piece of software!

The C Shell (CSH hereafter) was first introduced by BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) in 1979.

A shell is a command line interpreter which presents its user with an easy-to-learn easy-to-use interface with the underlying Unix kernel.

Important to note that all the "jokes" I am presenting in this quiz have been successfully tested on the CSH which is included in the HPUX11 distribution. In other words, although it may not always seem so, these are for real. Most should work on most other distributions, but given the diverse nature of Unix (and Linux) I cannot guarantee a 100% success.
2. At the CSH prompt, you typed "!:sugar's not healthy, how about saccharine?". CSH responds by "Bad substitute."

Answer: True

Very true :-)

It is said that there is absolutely no need to explain a good joke, so I won't break this rule throughout this quiz.

Instead I will give you some tidbits on CSH.

Did you know that while working for the BSD Unix team in Berkeley, Bill Joy also contributed to the development of the immortal VI editor as well as major network protocols such as TCP/IP and NFS?
3. CSH is also a witty commentator on the political state of affairs. What is CSH's answer to the following query: "If I had a ( for every unnecessary $ the Government spends, what would I have in hand?"

Answer: Too many ('s.

Governments do seem to have the perpetual habit of throwing too much of our money down the drain.

Bill Joy called it the C Shell because he made a move towards a syntax which resembles the C programming language.
4. You have an extremely idle and non-productive colleague called John Doe. You could always check if CSH agrees with your view. All you need to do is ask it. Which of the following would be the response to your question below? "How would you rate John Doe's incompetence?

Answer: Unmatched ".

Great minds think alike, and CSH just verified this by affirming your view on John Doe.

C Shell has introduced more than a few enhancements which were unavailable in its predecessor (the Bourne shell) - built-in arithmetic operators, command line history editing, job control and command aliases, to name a few.
5. A standard Unix command for program compilation is "make". You try to compile a non-existing program, typing "make love" at the CSH command prompt. What happens next?

Answer: None of these

No Unix system will take such measures against an innocent user.

But, as you may have already noticed, CSH has its own special way of letting you know you have done wrong.

In the case of "make love", CSH will issue the slightly harsh response:

"Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop."
6. Ask CSH "[ Where is Jimmy Hoffa?". What is the answer?

Answer: Missing ].

Cannot blame CSH for choosing to be plain informative on this one.

The main issue with C Shell over the years was that it did not prove robust and unambiguous enough for scripting purposes. The majority of Unix shell scripts are written with Bourne Shell (SH), and later with Korn (KSH) and Bourne Again (BASH) shells.
7. A standard Unix command used to display the contents of a file is "cat". You try to display a non-existent file named "food in cans" by typing in "cat 'food in cans'". What is the funny outcome?

Answer: cat: Cannot open food in cans

Poor feline.

In an attempt to improve on the missing features and problems of CSH, a new shell was devised. It was called TCSH (Tenex C Shell) and was the default shell of a few operating systems, most notably the Mac OS X, which replaced it with the near-standard BASH later.
8. "nice" is a Unix command which manipulates command priorities. What happens when you type in "nice dog - sit down!"?

Answer: dog: Command not found.

Have you ever taught Scooby Doo to obey to "sit down!"?

CSH introduced another important concept which was incorporated into the shells which prevail in the Unix and Linux world today - the customizable environment. Each user logging into the Unix server can customize their working environment by creating independent command prompt, command aliases and environment variables.
9. "man" is a standard Unix command which invokes the manual pages of the requested command (e.g. "man rm" displays the manual pages for "rm"). What is the response to "man sex"?

Answer: No manual entry for sex.

I also think that sex and commands do not go well hand in hand.

Bill Joy went on from Berkeley in 1982 to co-found Sun Microsystems. He stayed there until 2003.
10. Is the following CSH sequence real (t) or was it made up by me (f)? man: why did you get a divorce? man:: Too many arguments.

Answer: True

Too many arguments are undesirable both in marriage life and in the "man" command.

Nicole Hamilton developed the "Hamilton C Shell" for Windows. It simulates Unix C Shell behaviour and environment for Windows users who prefer to work and code with C Shell syntax.
11. A standard Unix command which directs the operating system to halt its operation for the specified amount of time is "sleep" (e.g. "sleep 5" will halt the shell for 5 seconds). The "sleep" command expects only numeric character(s) as an argument. Fill in the response to "sleep 1_night_with_me!". sleep: --- --------- in argument

Answer: bad character

Any character other than 0-9 is considered a bad character by sleep, and so does the deprived issuer of this erroneous command.

In many modern Linux and even Unix distributions, CSH has been deprecated. For example, in Red Hat Linux the command "csh" has been linked to "tcsh". In other words, CSH is not really included in this distribution and when you type "csh" you actually invoke TCSH.
12. Job control is one of the features which CSH introduced into the Unix shell world and it has been incorporated to all major shells. The percent symbol is used to refer to a job. What is the response to a user trying to refer to a non-existing job, as in "%blow"?

Answer: No such job

Sorry. Maybe I should have X-rated this quiz. Hope you give it a fair rating after all.

"%blow: No such job." - virtual chastity!

Sun Microsystems has more than a few technologies to its name. The Java technology introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1995 has been once of the major building blocks of the Internet. Java technology enables a one-time developing effort for applications that will run on any computer environment.
13. After typing a certain CSH command line, I received the following response: "Modifier failed." What was the command line?

Answer: ^How did the sex change operation go?^

A bit tricky, there is no "modify" command in Unix.

Here are the first lines of "man csh" (csh manual pages):

NAME
csh - a shell (command interpreter) with C-like syntax

SYNOPSIS
csh [-cefinstvxTVX] [command_file] [argument_list ...]

DESCRIPTION
csh is a command language interpreter that incorporates a command
history buffer, C-like syntax, and job control facilities.
14. "ar" is a standard Unix command for creating and manipulating file archives. If a user wants to add or replace files in an archive named "A", he should issue the command "ar r A". How does CSH react when a user issues the command "ar r Money", given that an archive named "Money" does not exist in the current working directory?

Answer: ar: creating Money

How generous!

A more common variation of "ar" is "tar" (the added "t" stands for "tape"). Please don't panic when you hear Unix avids talk about "tarballs". We're not that perverse, "tarball" is the common lingo for a tar archive.
15. What's the laconic response to following CSH command line: "You were great tonight, can you please light me a cigarette before sleep?"

Answer: No match.

If only that match was available.

Thanks for taking this quiz. Thanks to Bill Joy for enabling all these lapses of the earnest machine. Hope you had as much fun as I had writing it and collecting/recollecting these gems. Adios!
Source: Author gentlegiant17

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor crisw before going online.
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