UNIX Power Tools
by Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly, Mike Loukides, Shelley Powers, Electronic Publishing · first published 1993
67% recommend31% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Big hypertext-style tour of command-line tools, shell usage, quoting, and text manipulation like cut, tr, and batch editing. Suits sysadmins and users learning shell scripting, as a reference and for tips.
Common criticism: Parts are dated, since the book is old
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Seems ok at a glance. If you want a classic though, check out Unix Power Tools at O'Reilly
on “An Introduction to Unix (2014)” ↗…libraries or write a makefiles from scratch. Starting next summer, I will include a 2-3 hour UNIX command line (and also a 2-3 hour LaTeX) intro into all courses I teach where that can be justified. (The UNIX Power Tools [1] book is a useful resource for teaching, I found in the past.) [1] https://www.amazon.de/Unix-Power-Tools-Classique-Us/dp/05960...
on “Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?” ↗…https://www.worldcat.org/title/commercialism-and-journalism/... A short but extraordinarily illuminating read on the influence of money and advertising on the press, coming near the beginning of the era of mass media. 5. Unix Power Tools, by Mike Loukides et al (1997) https://www.worldcat.org/title/unix-power-tools/oclc/2584502... The book that really got me "over the hump" in understanding the Unix environment and tools. Now somewhat…
on “Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?” ↗…Ubuntu and Fedora and whichever one you feel more comfortable with will work. If you're more interested in going deep under the hood with a server operating system buy a copy of Unix in a Nutshell and Unix Power Tools (O'Reilly) and get a copy of FreeeBSD or Gentoo.
on “Ask HN: What Linux-distro to learn about Linux?” ↗…http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=978059600... Some/all of her books: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/678#Books Her O'Reilly articles: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/678#Books Any system administrator or general user can learn a lot from Unix Power Tools: New, 3rd ed: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/678#Books Cheap, 2nd ed (prolly good enough if $ matters): http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=8354343877&... Some of this looks good, some…
on “Ask HN: Linux Adminstration Course for non-sysadmins?” ↗…Scratch. You'll develop a rich understanding of how a UNIX-like OS fits together, including a fair bit of shell functionality: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/ My favourite dead-tree UNIX book would be UNIX Power Tools, 3rd Edition (http://www.amazon.com/Power-Tools-Third-Shelley-Powers/dp/05...). It may be a while before it's a truly valuable resource, but keep it in mind.
on “Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?” ↗UNIX Power Tools by O'Reilly & Associates remains one of the best collections of these tips and tricks I've found. It's now nearly 20 years old, and the most recent (3rd) edition was published in 2002, and very likely…
on “Linux Command Examples” ↗UNIX Power Tools by O'Reilly is a text I strongly recommend for this. It's a sort of hardcopy hypertext narrative through a number of command-line and terminal-focused tools. Parts of it are dated now (it's ... gasp,…
on “An Awk Primer” ↗>If you want a classic though, check out Unix Power Tools at O'Reilly Yes, that's very good. If I was to compare it with my recommendation in this thread, of The UNIX Programming Environment (UPE), I'd say that the Power Tools book is like a cookbook, while…
on “An Introduction to Unix (2014)” ↗If you're into the command line, I'd recommend getting a physical copy of Unix Power Tools [1] and spending some time with it. This is a nice article, but Unix Power Tools is better in almost every way for learning the basics (and more) of the Unix command line. This article mentions a few…
on “The Art of Command Line” ↗IIRC I first learned of Perl in the Unix Power Tools book from O'Reilly. That book was really good.
on “Awk vs. Perl (2009)” ↗A few of the early O'Reilly books. UNIX Power Tools may or may not be one of them, but remains a phenomenal book. It's what got me "over the hump" in grokking Unix and how it and its tools worked, many, many moons ago. Larry Peek is a God.
on “Using sed to make indexes for books (1997)” ↗>UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook. That's a great book. I've read parts of both the Unix and later Linux versions. Edit: It also reminded me of the O'Reilly book Unix Power Tools - another classic. I had bought it early on and read almost the whole thing. Both it and the Handbook are quite thick, too.
on “Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?” ↗Chapter 20 of O'Reilly's "Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition" is all about batch editing and covers ed/ex as well. Maybe there's an old copy of "Unix Power Tools" over in your server room or an abandoned cubicle in the office... the content has not…
on “Batch editing files with ed” ↗I don't know about interactive, but the book Unix Power Tools is a great survey, with quite a lot of depth. If you want something interactive as you work through the book (and even CLI itself), it would be hard to beat bash. ;-)
on “Ask HN: Best Command-Line Applications?” ↗