Update ssh.md

scottmwyant · Sep 1, 2023 · 466dbb6 · 466dbb6
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@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Use `ssh-keygen` to generate a pair of keys.  The name of the private key file i
 
 ### On Windows
 
-There is an unfortunate quirk with `ssh-keygen` on Windows.  Trivial once it's understood, it was a significant barrier for me when first attempting to use SSH and one of the reasons I would suggest using WSL2.  The snippet below shows the beginning of the process.  The 3rd line is the kicker, the wording used makes it clear that it's asking for a file but the input needs to be an (existing) folder, not a file.  This input is optional, if you don't specify a directory, the key pair is C:\Users\me\.ssh\id_rsa and C:\Users\me\.ssh\id_rsa.pub.  The actual behavior conflicts with the last part of the prompt (C:\Users\me/.ssh/id_rsa), which sets the expectation that you need to specify the path to a *file*, which is indeed the case on Linux.  
+There is an unfortunate quirk with `ssh-keygen` on Windows.  Trivial once it's understood, it was a significant barrier for me when first attempting to use SSH and one of the reasons I would suggest using WSL2.  The snippet below shows the beginning of the process.  The 3rd line is the kicker, the wording used makes it clear that it's asking for a file but to a Windows user it might look like it's asking for a folder because there is no file extension.  It is indeed asking for the name of a file, the private key file is extension-less.  This input is optional, if you don't specify a directory, the key pair is `C:\Users\me\.ssh\id_rsa` and `C:\Users\me\.ssh\id_rsa.pub`.  The actual behavior conflicts with the last part of the prompt (C:\Users\me/.ssh/id_rsa), which sets the expectation that you need to specify the path to a *file*, which is indeed the case on Linux.  
 
 The seperators used in the prompt are also decidedly sloppy.  You have to recognize that the default private key file in Linux is `~/.ssh/id_rsa` and that the Windows equivalent to the Linux homepath, `~`, is `%USERPROFILE%`.  Considering this OS translation you can see that the default file path shown in the prompt is supposed to be `{whatever the OS considers HOME}/.ssh/id_rsa` but the path seperators used in the prompt must be hard-coded, as they do not change with the environment.