The Art of UNIX Programming (The Addison-Wesley Professional Computng Series)

Category: Programming
Author: Eric S. Raymond
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Comments

by chubot   2021-04-06
Shouldn't scripts over 100 lines be rewritten in Python or Ruby?

https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Profe...

Online for free: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/

by chubot   2020-12-08
Turns out, nothing substantial had been published since the 1980s.

The best reference I've found on this is The Art of Unix Programming, which was published in 2003:

https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Profe...

The book is also online for free:

Command Line Options: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch10s05.html

User Interface Design Patterns: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch11s06.html

Still it's nice to see this knowledge circulating!

Joel Spolsky's 2003 review of this book: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/12/14/biculturalism/

by chubot   2020-10-27
(author here) I do use Python. In fact I wrote something like 30K lines of Python for Oil.

The question isn't shell OR Python.

My shell scripts call Python scripts, many of white I wrote myself. That is working as intended.

They also call C programs, C++ programs and R programs. And put JavaScript programs in various places.

----

I guess this is a huge misconception about shell that I have to write a blog post about.

https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Profe...

by anonymous   2017-08-20

For Unix-like design patterns in this area, look at Raymond's "The Art of Unix Programming". It discusses the prioritization of command line arguments over environment variables and configuration files, and so on.

by Steve Rowe   2017-08-20

I recommend the book The Art of Unix Programming by ESR. It covers choice of editor, programming language, etc. It also gives a good sense for the mindset behind programming on Unix or Linux.

For editors, you probably want either Vim or Emacs. They are both different and which one is better is more about personal taste than anything else. I use Vim. It is great for quickly moving around the code and making changes. I didn't like Emacs as much but many people do. Emacs is extremely extensible and can be used for everything from a news reader to an ide. Try both and see what you like.