Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Development Tools

Posted by cameroneckelberry2
cameroneckelberry2
8,701 Points

What does "Flag" mean?

The teacher has been calling things like -v or -i flags. I've just started wondering what that means? What is a flag in this context?

I've found this:

"a variable used to indicate a particular property of the data in a record."

But that doesn't seem to quite fit...

1 Answer

Grigorij Schleifer
Grigorij Schleifer
10,365 Points
Grigorij Schleifer
Grigorij Schleifer
10,365 Points

Hi cameron,

if you type

ls -a

To list all the files and documents and so on. "-a" is a flag. That tells the command line to give all directories and so on...

Does it make sense?

cameroneckelberry2
cameroneckelberry2
8,701 Points

Ya that works, so basically you are adding a variable command to something in your command.