On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 23:00:46 +1000 Alexis <flexibe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Petter Adsen <pet...@synth.no> writes: > > > For a long time I've been meaning to learn more about regular > > expressions, and I found the following books: "Mastering Regular > > Expressions" and "Sed & awk", both from O'Reilly. Does anyone > > have any experience with these, and an opinion as to which I > > should start with? > > i have the former, and highly recommend it. :-) i've not read the > latter, so can't comment on it. Thanks, I guess both are worth reading, as sed is something I definitely should be more familiar with. > > I also found the K&R book, "The UNIX Programming Environment" by > > Kernighan and Pike, and "UNIX Systems Programming for SVR4" from > > O'Reilly. Since I want to learn C I know I need to read the > > first of these, but I was wondering how the other two are, if > > anyone here has read them. > > i have a copy of "The UNIX Programming Environment". i have in no > way read it cover-to-cover, but some comments i can make on it > are: > > * i feel it's useful for cultivating the classic Unix 'toolkit' > mindset, > where one connects various programs in various ways to produce > certain results. Bonus point. > * Being published in 1984, it discusses "/the/ shell" instead of > "a > shell", and thus doesn't cover the differences between the > various shells now available, e.g. bash vs. zsh vs. fish > vs. dash etc. Well, that could be a good thing, as I could probably find good shell-specific documentation online later. > * The "Document Preparation" chapter feels somewhat esoteric given > our > current context of things like LaTeX, Pandoc, Scribus and so on. Yes, I just had a look at it, it seems it focuses on writing man pages. I have other books on LaTeX anyhow. > > Also, are there other books I might want to supplement these > > with? > > i guess it depends on what other specific areas you're interested > in .... i have a copy of O'Reilly's tome "Unix Power Tools", and > still regularly find it very useful. I'm mostly interested in getting a good foundation in C programming, but generic UNIX tools/shell books that are good are always useful. I find learning is easier from an actual book than electronic text, but I must confess I haven't really tried reading books on my iThing. The K&R book was available, though, so I might buy that just to try it. I'll put "Unix Power Tools" on my shopping list - thanks :) Petter -- "I'm ionized" "Are you sure?" "I'm positive."
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