Ideal for UNIX users who hunger for technical — yet accessible — information, UNIX Power Tools, 2nd Edition, consists of tips, tricks, concepts, and freeware (CD-ROM included). It also covers add-on utilities and how to take advantage of clever features in the most popular UNIX utilities.

Loaded with even more practical advice about almost every aspect of UNIX, this edition addresses the technology that UNIX users face today, differing from the first edition in a number of important ways.

First, it slants the blend of options and commands more toward the POSIX utilities, including the GNU versions; the bash and tcsh shells have greater coverage, but we've kept the first edition's emphasis on the core concepts of sh and csh that will help you use all UNIX shells; and, Perl is more important than awk these days, so we've de-emphasized awk in this edition.

This is a browser's book...like a magazine that you don't read from start to finish, but leaf through repeatedly until you realize that you've read it all. The book is structured so that it bursts at the seams with cross references. Interesting "sidebars" explore syntax or point out other directions for exploration, including relevant technical details that might not be immediately apparent. You'll find articles abstracted from other O'Reilly books, new information that highlights program "tricks" and "gotchas," tips posted to the Net over the years, and other accumulated wisdom.

The 53 chapters in this book discuss topics like file management, text editors, shell programming — even office automation. Overall, there's plenty of material here to satisfy even the most voracious appetites. The bottom line? UNIX Power Tools is loaded with practical advice about almost every aspect of UNIX. It will help you think creatively about UNIX, and will help you get to the point where you can analyze your own problems. Your own solutions won't be far behind.

The CD-ROM includes all of the scripts and aliases from the book, plus perl, GNU emacs, netpbm (graphics manipulation utilities), ispell,screen, the sc spreadsheet, and about 60 other freeware programs. In addition to the source code, all the software is precompiled for Sun4, Digital UNIX, IBM AIX, HP/UX, Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and SCO UNIX.

The classic publication on "... the best free software for UNIX power users" has been updated and expanded with POSIX utilities, more 'bash' and 'tsch' tools, updated scripts and programs. Software is pre-compiled for common UNIX platforms and Linux. This densely packed user's guide and programming reference leads you through the logical progression of in/out logging, home directory organization and terminal setup. In each case provides scripts, techniques, optimization pointers, code, very good explanations and rationale. Explains the shell environment, variables and relationships, shows how shells interpret your input, then guides you through optimized and customized shell prompts. Includes the most extensive discussion of command line use and optimization we have seen to date. Examines aliasing, job control and I/O redirection. Very good focus on file system navigation, wild cards, finding files with 'find', renaming, linking, archiving, backup, and of course answers the eternal question, "Where did I put that?" One entire chapter deals with file security, ownership and sharing, very good. Continues to emphasize file management with searching and pattern matching techniques (regular expressions), file compare and count utilities. Provides vi tips and custom command techniques, includes Emacs, sed and batch editing.

Categories:

• Science & Math
  • Mathematics