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Title: Unix Power Tools, Third Edition by Shelley Powers, Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly, Mike Loukides ISBN: 0-596-00330-7 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $69.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (56 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Good Big Book - but worth the hype?
Comment: A Good Big Book - but worth the hype?
The Unix Power Tools has already established a reputation of being a classic. The behemoth has no less that 1073 pages and goes accompanied by a CD with a lot of small shellscripts that are described in the book. The authors show a thorough understanding of the subject and are able to explain the ways of Unix in a casual talkative way. Much work is devoted to the layout and the text edition. For example, the crossreferences are well done, greyed out in readable italics. The publisher seems to understand the importance of easy readable text. Many of us know how a good book can be spoiled by hasty and bad editing, and it's a relief to see that O'Reilly takes this issue seriously. The text is divided into paragraphs of about 1/4 to 1 page in size. These paragraphs deal with the Unix commands, the shells, the history of unix or the included nifty shellscripts. One might think that the authors view Unix as a collection of structured trivia - a view I personally like. You won't read this book 'cover to cover' (to use that awful cliche), but you'll start joyreading for that bit of advice or for that handy tool they've written. (For example: the thing that got me up the wall was that filenames can have empty spaces at the end, so it seems you cannot delete them. I should have known that one way earlier :^( ) Sometimes the authors write down some very casual paragraphs: a flame from usenet (Why NOT to use the C-shell for programming), the history of a command ( grep is: g from global, RE is regular expression, and the P stands for print, hence g/RE/P) or other fun to read items. It will not be the book you'll grab for serious studying or when the system goes down unexpectedly. The problems with big books are usually twofold and this one suffers rather badly from it. First of all it is written for the novice and expert alike - a concept that comes from a marketing and not from educational point of view. The authors repeat the man pages - did you know you can find files by name with the 'find' command? And they go on for every Find option. The novice who didn't know about the find command will not try anything as fancy like to build a database with the filestructure in it in order to speed up his find command. Equally, experts won't like the basics explained. The second problem with big books is that lots of the presented material is not relevant to your need or situation. You haven't got the C-shell? Throw away a couple of pages. Don't like the chapter ' vi tips & tricks' , 'Saving time at the commandline' or 'creating custom commands in vi', then you can skip another 100 pages. Conclusion. Although lot's of information isn't relevant to your need, unix-implementation, shell or skill-level, this book is easy to read thanks to the good layout and small paragraphs. The authors truly have years of experience and have made many handy shellscripts. For those of you who want to like to master the commandline of Unix and like to skim for the golden hint, this book is a true find. But if you know what you want to learn then dedicated books present a better alternative to this somewhat unfocussed book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Jeffrey McPheeters MyMac.com Book review
Comment: Unix Power Tools, an apt title not meant to be redundant (Unix is THE power-user's operating system, after all) has been the ShopSmith manual or the Unix Almanac since it first appeared in the early 1990s. The second edition appeared in 1999, and with the amazing, if not predicted, growth of Unix and expansion into many flavors; it's fitting that a 3rd edition should appear now. Over half of the articles have been revised since that last edition to include information pertaining to many of the smaller but ground-gaining Unix's such as Linux, freeBSD, and Mac OS X's Darwin.
This is a huge book; thus the need for four authors! For a network administrator who understands Unix, and who is contemplating the merging of Mac OS X Server and Client systems into their network, this book should pay for itself in dividends. I was impressed with how thoroughly this book covers the multitude of topics contained within. Everything from mastering the various editors to learning to write shell scripts to detailed instructions for maintaining and backing up a network is included.
I found the book organized logically according to various services. The O'Reilly web site has a complete list of the contents, the index, and user reviews. O'Reilly also has an online fee-based service called MySafari (cool name) which allows subscribers the ability to build virtual bookshelves of O'Reilly books to have at their beck and call whenever they are online. It's free to explore and there's a 14-day demo period as well. You may see a lot for detail of this book by visiting their site.
With more than 50 chapters detailing nearly every nook and cranny of the most common Unix distributions, there's something here for every Unix power user. The updated and expanded sections on security and Windows access are welcome indeed. Every topic is explained with examples and illustrated richly with screen captures. Common problems, mistakes, and real-world examples are distributed liberally throughout the book. If any one book could help a Unix administrator, developer, or power user come to Ôgrep' with the full capabilities of Unix, it would be this book.
Just a few high lights for me included the extensive section on the vi editor, detailing many functions I had no idea existed, such as running scripts within vi as shortcuts for oft-repeated commands. The section on eMacs got me excited about exploring that powerful editor to the extent that I downloaded one of the more extensive distributions for Mac OS X so I could try it out. For a Unix text editor, it is really a good one; however, coming from the Mac background I appreciate BBEdit more and more. Still, every Unix power user will find that some basic knowledge of vi or eMacs will come in very handy when they find themselves with console access and no local text editor other than these.
The closing chapters covering many security issues have captured my attention at this time, as I contemplate moving a few of my domains from a remote dedicated server to one directly under my control running Mac OS X. I think I understand a little better what my host providers have been doing for me all these years!
Make space near your workstation now for this book. If you are a mobile laptop user, like myself, consider becoming a user of MySafari services at O'Reilly, which would allow you to have a book like this available online when it is not convenient to carry the extra weight with you. Bottom line: no serious Unix user and no serious newcomer intending to become proficient in Unix should be without this book!
Rating: 5
Summary: the most tattered book on my shelf
Comment: Let's get a couple things straight: one, I buy a lot of books; two, I read about 15% of each one. This book is one of the few exceptions. It already had 56 reviews when I wrote this, but after picking it up for the 84th time, I felt compelled to add my five stars. Buy with confidence.
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