On the topic of punctuation

  • This is a hyphen: -
  • This is a dash: --

Do not say “ls dash a” when you mean “ls hyphen a”.

You can cheat this a bit when writing English sentences, but the command line is usually much less forgiving.

I oftentimes say “hyphen hyphen” when I mean dash, since it seems like a lot of people confuse the two. I dream of a world where I can confidently just say “dash”…