UNIX in a Nutshell Book Review : UNIX Explained : Poised Solutions Library

UNIX in a Nutshell Book Review

UNIX in a Nutshell

Author:: Arnold Robbins
Publisher:: O'Reilly
Published:: 2004
Pages:: 885

UNIX in a Nutshell is a book you will often find in an UNIX admin's book collection. UNIX in a Nutshell is primarily man pages of the command line applications often found on UNIX systems. Having the man pages printed and checked actually makes for quite good reading, and it is quite normal for people to find useful applications they may not have realised have existed.

You may notice I use the term application or command line applications to refer to the same thing as UNIX in a Nutshell terms UNIX commands, I do that to show the distinction between inbuilt shell commands and actual separate command style applications.

There is a fair bit more than just the standard UNIX applications and their man pages in this book, the Bash, Korn and tcsh shell are looked at along with package management, now quite common amongst the UNIX and Linux operating systems.

UNIX in a Nutshell Chapters

Introduction
- UNIX in the 21st Century
- Obtaining Compilers
- Building Software
- What's in the Quick Reference
- Beginner's Guide
- Solaris: Standard Compliant Programs
UNIX Commands
- Introduction
- Alphabetical Summary of Common Commands
- Alphabetical Summary of Solaris Commands
- Alphabetical Summary of GNU/Linux Commands
- Alphabetical Summary of Mac OS X Commands
- Alphabetical Summary of Java Commands
The UNIX Shell: An Overview
- Introduction to the Shell
- Purpose of the Shell
- Shell Flavors
- Shell Source Code URLs
- Common Features
- Differing Features
The Bash and Korn Shells
- Overview of Features
- Invoking the Shell
- Syntax
- Functions
- Variables
- Arithmetic Expressions
- Command history
- Job Control
- Command Execution
- Restricted Shells
- Built-in Commands (Bash and Korn Shells)
tcsh: An Extended C Shell
- Overview of Features
- Invoking the Shell
- Syntax
- Variables
- Expressions
- Command History
- Command-Line Manipulation
- Job Control
- Built-in Commands
Package Management
- Linux Package Management
- The Red hat Package Manager
- Yum: Yellowdog Updater Modified
- up2date: Red Hat Update Agent
- The Debian Package Manager
- Mac OS X Package Management
- Solaris Package Management
Pattern Matching
- Filenames Versus Patterns
- Metacharacters
- Metacharacters, Listed by UNIX Program
- Examples of Searching
The Emacs Editor
- Conceptual Overview
- Command-Line Syntax
- Summary of Commands by Group
- Summary of Commands by Key
- Summary of Commands by Name
The vi, ex, and vim Editors
- Conceptual Overview
- Command-Line Syntax
- Review of vi Operations
- vi Commands
- vi Configuration
- ex basics
- Alphabetical Summary of ex Commands
The sed Editor
- Conceptual Overview
- Command-Line Syntax
- Syntax of sed Commands
- Group Summary of sed Commands
- Alphabetical Summary of sed Commands
The awk Programming Language
- Conceptual Overview
- Command-Line Syntax
- Patterns and Procedures
- Built-in Variables
- Operators
- Variable and Array Assignment
- User-Defined Functions
- Gawk-Specific Features
- Implementation Limits
- Group Listing of awk Functions and Commands
- Alphabetical Summary of awk Functions and Commands
- Output Redirections
- Source Code
Source Code Management: An Overview
- Introduction and Terminology
- Usage Models
- UNIX Source Code Management Systems
- Other Source Code Management Systems
The Revision Control System
- Overview of Commands
- Basic Operation
- General RCS Specifications
- Alphabetical Summary of Commands
The Concurrent Versions System
- Conceptual Overview
- Command-Line Syntax and options
- Dot Files
- Environment Variables
- Keywords and Keyword Modes
- Dates CVSROOT Variables
- Alphabetical Summary of Commands
The Subversion Version Control System
- Conceptual Overview
- Obtaining Subversion
- Using Subversion: A Quick Tour
- The Subversion Command Line Client: svn
- Repository Administration: svnadmin
- Examining the Repository: svnlook
- Providing Remote Access: svnserve
- Other Subversion Components
The GNU Make Utility
- Conceptual Overview
- Command-Line Syntax
- Makefile Lines
- Macros
- Special Target names
- Writing Command Lines
The GDB Debugger
- Conceptual Overview
- Command-Line Syntax
- Initialization Files
- GDB Expressions
- The GDB Text user Interface
- Group Listing of GDB Commands
- Summary of set and show Commands
- Summary of the info Command
- Alphabetical Summary of GDB Commands
Writing Manual Pages
- Introduction
- Overviews of nroff/troff
- Alphabetical Summary of man Macros
- Predefined Strings
- Internal Names
- Sample Document

UNIX in a Nutshell Appendices

ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) Character Set
Bibliography
Index

A lot of the book is devoted to various UNIX editors, Emacs (GNU Editor), vim and vi (standard UNIX editors), and sed (stream editor). If the truth be known, most UNIX administrators and developers spend most of their time using at least one of these editors, and these editors are actually quite complex programs in and of themselves. Capability with these editors (normally people will specialise in just one) tends to have a very large effect on their overall efficiency. So, any sections on editors is always a welcome addition in UNIX books.

There is a fair amount of information for UNIX developers that is also useful for UNIX Administrators, such as version control systems, GNUs make and GDB (GNU's debugger), that rounds the book of nicely.

Writing manual pages is also explored, and there is only a small amount of information online that explores this art, so again this is a welcome feature of UNIX in a Nutshell.

UNIX in a Nutshell Overall is a good read, with lots of useful information, acts as a great reference and explores the important elements of a UNIX system. UNIX in a Nutshell is a highly recommended read to compliment UNIX Administration