[FM Discuss] Further sections needed in the Introduction to the Command Line
Andy Oram
andyo at oreilly.com
Mon Apr 6 05:15:09 PDT 2009
Thanks. I know there are examples of the "for" construct in the book, but I'd like one moved to the customization section. I originally put it early in the book with the "multiple files" section, but now I think it's a bit too intimidating to go that early.
The book is already looking much better.
I need someone to review "Detaching A Session" in the GNU Screen section. It's a bit vague. For instance, I expect it won't work if the machine running the session has a DHCP-given address and is unaccessible through an IP address.
Andy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Cherlin" <echerlin at gmail.com>
To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
Sent: Monday, April 6, 2009 12:49:58 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [FM Discuss] Further sections needed in the Introduction to the Command Line
On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Andy Oram <andyo at oreilly.com> wrote:
> Ed, if you have time and energy to write new sections, please do. I'm sure they'll be good. But we also want to spread the work around, and we've had good submissions from many people, most of whom are unknown to me.
Time is always an issue. I forgot I had my daughter visiting this
weekend. I can definitely do
o chown
o the compression utilities
o ftp
o A little more on apt and yum
o lynx
o Midnight Commander
o Continuing a command over multiple lines
o The "for" control construct
o Something on recursive directory searching
I'll leave grep (if you think it needs more than the five pages it
has) and sed to you.
The new Superuser chapter is a great idea. It clearly needs more work.
After I do this lot, I am going to take some time to work on Turtle
Art lessons in Math and Computer Science. Then I intend to propose a
book.
> When I said "regular expressions" I meant the grep kind. I might do that because I recently did it for another introductory book.
Someone should review the pages I list below to see whether we want to
do anything more about those features, such as a short named section
for each that gives the basics.
> Andy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Edward Cherlin" <echerlin at gmail.com>
> To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> Sent: Saturday, April 4, 2009 9:47:21 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: [FM Discuss] Further sections needed in the Introduction to the Command Line
>
> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Andy Oram <andyo at oreilly.com> wrote:
>> I'm happy to say that after a day or so of editing I'm happy with the
>> material in the book. This is testimony to high quality of every
>> submission. As a reminder, it's here:
>>
>> http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/CommandLineIntro/WebHome
>>
>> I edited or re-checked the parts from INTRODUCTION through REALLY
>> ADVANCED,many of which were in. I skimmed the rest and feel it's less
>> critical, but I'm going back to it after sending this mail.
>>
>> I found places where I feel chunks of information should be
>> added. I've filled in a few, but I don't want to try to fill in
>> everything that's missing. Could you spread the word around and see if
>> you can find volunteers to work on these?
>>
>> Andy
>
> I'll do some.
>
>> ---
>>
>> Important commands:
>>
>> The following were added by someone to the outline, and I think most
>> of the following (perhaps not all) should be in the book:
>
> Me.
>
> I generated a PDF for search purposes. The PDF does not have the book
> title on the cover page, nor does it have the other usual front matter
> (title page, copyright/version history). Page numbers below are from
> this PDF. Done means that there is at least one clear example of
> syntax and result, an explanation of the purpose of the command, and
> perhaps notes on quirks.
>
>> # chown p. 115, not done
>> # more (less is covered) p. 115, done
>> # wc p 117, done
>> # diff p. 117, done
>> # gzip, gunzip, gzcat not done
>> # grep p. 115, not done
>> # passwd p. 113, done
>> # telnet (ssh is covered) Should simply say that telnet is insecure and should be avoided. Yup, that's what p. 68 says
>> # ftp p. 118 Not done
>> # apt-get, yum p. 70 Basic command done, no attempt to explain options. Perhaps a link to more info?
>> # setenv, unset p. 108, done. Explains that this is not Bash, and how Bash does it.
>> # du -h p. 116, done. df is also done
>> # lynx Not done
>> # ln p. 112, done
>
> OK, that leaves chown, the compression utilities, grep, ftp, apt, yum,
> and lynx. I could do all of those tonight and tomorrow, and add
> Midnight Commander, which does many common command equivalents in a 24
> × 80 (or, actually, any size) text terminal window.
>
>> In BasicSyntax: would be nice to add "A few useful bits of syntax"
>> (from the outline):
>>
>> 1. Enclosing strings in quotation marks
>
> pp. 29, 31, 33, 55, 68, 99, 101, 103, 106, 108 Needs to warn of
> inconsistent usage among commands (not done), and the difference
> between '' and `` (covered on pp. 55, 113).
>
>> 2. Escaping special characters through quotation marks
>
> p. 29
>
>> and backslashes
>
> '\', pp. 29, 31, 62-64 in detail, in a table with a very bad page
> break, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 110
>
>> 3. Continuing a command over multiple lines
>
> Not done.
>
>> 4. White space as separators (any amount is treated the same)
>
> p. 10
>
>> The "for" control construct
>
> p. 90 Main use done; start to explain a second use, and breaks off.
>
>> Aliases
>
> pp. 55, 61-62
>
>> and functions
>
> pp. 52-53
>
>> Regular expressions:
>
> Called "wildcards" and "globbing". "Regular Expression" only occurs in
> describing grep.
>
> pp. 26-31
>
>> I'm thinking of taking the sed section and putting it into a chapter
>> that consists of: regular expression introduction, grep, sed. I
>> could probably do this myself, but I'd like to see whether someone
>> else would do it.
>>
>> Languages (Python, etc.):
>>
>> This section isn't what I expected, but I suppose it's OK. Actually,
>> the sections on AWK and sed are nice introductions. For the
>> scripting languages (Perl, Python, and Ruby) what I expected was a
>> description of the basic elements that make them valuable for people
>> who want to move up from scripting bash: arithmetic, arrays,
>> objects. But what we have at present is a different kind of feel for
>> what they offer.
>
> I'll let that go.
>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
> --
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> And Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
> http://earthtreasury.net/ (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Oram O'Reilly Media email: andyo at oreilly.com
> Editor 10 Fawcett Street, Fourth Floor voice: 617-499-7479
> Cambridge, MA 02138-1175 fax: 617-661-1116
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Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.net/ (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
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Discuss mailing list
Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
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Andy Oram O'Reilly Media email: andyo at oreilly.com
Editor 10 Fawcett Street, Fourth Floor voice: 617-499-7479
Cambridge, MA 02138-1175 fax: 617-661-1116
USA http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/
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