On 9/20/2013 12:11 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
Jerry Stuckle wrote:Andrei POPESCU wrote:Gary Dale wrote:ifconfig can be used to both query and change the ip addresses of network interfaces on your machine. Used with no arguments, it lists all known interfaces and gives a lot of information about them. It's still in use in Jessie so reports of its demise may be premature.'ip a' (short for 'ip addr') shows almost the same information, is available to users without using the full path and is shorter to type ;)Sure, it's ALMOST the same information. But it doesn't show everything ifconfig does.Actually it is the other way around. The older ifconfig doesn't show everything the newer ip command shows. Because newer functionality and features have been added to the Linux kernel and ifconfig can't show those things. Such as ip addresses that are aliases but which do not have a campatibility label. Those are invisible to ifconfig but will be displayed with ip. Now of course you might say that you never use those so this is no problem for you. But ifupdown and other tools do and so in general when looking at any random system there isn't a way to know if those are going to be in use or not. Therefore one must be at least aware of 'ip' in order to be able to dump and debug such configurations.
If you don't use those features (and most people don't), who cares about them? Sure, ifupdown and other tools use them - IF YOU USE THEM. But if not, it's immaterial.
As for shorter to type - 8 characters vs. 4 characters?$ echo ifconfig | wc -c 9 $ echo ip a | wc -c 5 Bob
You're counting an extra space which is not required.