Shell Kung Fu: Learn 10 Good Unix Usage Habits

Shell Kung Fu: Learn 10 Good Unix Usage Habits

Michael Stutz from IBM just released an article called Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits, if you already know your way in the shell kung fu you probably know them, althought I think it's a good (and quick) lecture about shell usage.

Michael Stutz points out bad habits on doing certain tasks, shows you a better way and explains why. In my opinion it's a really nice article to read.

At the end of the article you can read the following:

{quote It is good to examine your command-line habits for any bad usage patterns. Bad habits slow you down and often lead to unexpected errors. This article presents 10 new habits that can help you break away from many of the most common usage errors. Picking up these good habits is a positive step toward sharpening your UNIX command-line skills. {quote}

Here's a list of the good habits presented by the writer:

• Defining complex directory trees with one command
• Using option -C to unpack a .tar archive file
• Combining commands with control operators
• Quoting (and not quoting) a variable
• Using a backslash for long input
• Running a list of commands in a subshell
• Using xargs
• Counting lines with and without grep
• Using grep to find patterns in specific fields
• Using grep with and without cat

Too bad it doesn't introduce awk and sed more extensively, we all know they can do magic!
Well maybe some other time, who knows..