We’ve been done with the book for a few months, and today a box of books arrived from Wiley, a box filled with copies of Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML and CSS.
Sneaky ls flags and bestcompress
Another hiccup in a script included in Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, one that’s a subtle problem because it sometimes occurs because of a user-set LS_OPTIONS flag. Script #37, bestcompress, has the following sequence:
smallest="$(ls -l "$name" $Zout $gzout $bzout | \
awk '{print $5"="NR}' | sort -n | cut -d= -f2 | head -1)"
Permission checks in shell script
A reader of my new book Wicked Cool Shell Scripts pointed out that the capability of testing a file permission with find using the ‘+’ notation is GNU-specific.
Another nice review of Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
Thanks to Ed Schaefer and UnixReview.com for the nice review of Wicked Cool Shell Scripts in the most recent issue. Ed cuts to the chase:
Should You Buy the Book?
Taylor makes no effort to teach shell scripting. This book is not a tutorial, but with the author’s explanations a beginner should have little trouble understanding his scripts. In fact, if you have little scripting background, the first four chapters could provide your introduction to Unix.
Chopping off the last field of each line?
I’m working on the Web site for Creating Cool Web Sites and just realized that the little Unix trick I used while editing a file is actually a beautiful example of why so many people love Unix so much, so I thought I’d share it. The problem: a file where lines have 1-10 words + a last field value (in this case, a page number) that I don’t want. The challenge is to figure out how to easily remove that last field, when there are a variable number of fields on the line.
How do I tweak my PATH?
A reader writes:
“I’ve got a few of your books and today picked up Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, which I’m very much looking forward to working with.
“Totally greenhorn question, though: I want to keep the scripts in ~/bin and on page 12 you have an italic note saying to edit our PATH variable, but I’m not sure how, and don’t see any instructions anywhere else as to how to do this. I would be perfectly happy to have ~/scripts as you suggest but have not been able to create either. Your other book
Learning Unix for Mac OS X doesn’t appear to show how to do this with BASH. Many thanks in advance.”
How do I get my environment to come along when I “su”?
A reader writes:
Here is the problem – when I su to become root I don’t have any aliases or any stuff in my path. I also am not sure were the .bash_profile for root goes and if it is even read when su’ing – please help thanks.
And a nice review of “Wicked Cool Shell Scripts”
A nice compliment to the review of Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther is a new review just posted of Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, which you can read at linc.homeunix.org. An excerpt: “There is definitely something for everyone in this book, and I, particularly, found the chapters dealing with web hacks and administration really
