Linux Candy: Steam Locomotive – fun command for your terminal

Last Updated on May 25, 2022

Who loves eye candy? Don’t be shy — you can raise both hands!!

Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open-source software in this series.

Steam Locomotive is a tiny C program, written in 295 lines of code. It’s just a harmless bit of fun.

Installation

Compiling is trivial. You can compile sl by cloning the project repository, and issuing the make command. But you might find a convenient package in your distribution. Either way, installation takes 10 seconds.

In Operation

ls is a command to list computer files in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. When invoked without any arguments, ls lists the files in the current working directory.

If you mistakenly type sl instead of ls, you’ll see the following animation in your terminal.

Like all good command-line utilities, ls has a range of command options. Only a few of these options are replicated with sl.

You might be aware that ls -a lists all entries in the directory, including the entries with start with a . (dot). Typing sl -a produces the following animation. Witness the accident at hand with people crying for help. I guess it’s a good choice for -a.

Any self-respecting Linux user will know that the -l flag displays the mode, number of links, owner, group, size (in bytes), and time of last modification for each file. With sl, the -l flag slightly bizarrely shows a little version of the steam locomotive. It’s a bit of a strange choice considering you get more information with the -l flag with ls.

ls -F is a much less common option, putting a / after each file name if the file name is a directory, an * if the file can be executed, an = if the file is a socket, a | if the file is a FIFO, and a @ for a symbolic link. If you mistype ls with the -F flag, you’ll see your loco literally flying away.

Summary

The developer describes Steam Locomotive as a highly advanced animation program for curing your bad habit of mistyping.

In reality, the animation is basic, and it probably won’t cure you of typing errors. But it’s a bit of harmless fun nevertheless.

Website: github.com/mtoyoda/sl
Support: Fork
Developer: Toyoda Masashi and contributors
License: Open Source

Steaam Locomotive is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Complete list of articles in this series: