Ask HN: Why do readmes still use $ in copy-pasteable commands?
2 garyfirestorm 4 8/8/2025, 11:42:02 PM
I often encounter this in docs/readmes
`$ ls -lt` often renders with a copy button that you can easily click and when you paste it in terminal it shows up as `$ ls -lt` with an unnecessary $ causing an error $ command not found or something like that...
wouldn't it make sense to just have `ls -lt` and not add the $ in front of it?
Comments (4)
perrygeo · 2m ago
It's used in documentation mostly to distinguish the command from stdout. And it's verbatim what you see if you copy-paste from most default bash shells.
rzzzwilson · 35m ago
The "$" prompt is shorthand to indicate the command is run as a non-root user. If you see "# ls -lt" that indicates the command should be run as root. The problem lies with whoever set up the copy button to include the prompt as part of the copied command.
gibbitz · 4m ago
How do you specify this on GitHub markdown?
garyfirestorm · 16m ago
this is a widespread problem - many libraries, git repos follow this convention unfortunately