Unix in a Nutshell: System V & Solaris 2.0 (Paperback)

by Daniel Gilly (Author), The staff of O'Reilly Media (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Simply the best System V and Solaris reference on the market today, Unix in a Nutshell won't steer you wrong. The book's concise style delivers the essential information on Unix, shell, and utility commands. Its command documentation is clear and complete and its examples are relevant and easy to follow.

Gilly starts with a complete, alphabetized listing of core Unix commands. Each entry includes a syntax summary, a clear statement of what the command does, and a full list of options, each with commentary on its function. The author then covers shell documentation, supplying details on the Bourne, Korn, and C shells and documenting each shell's commands in the standard format. Gilly also includes a section on regular expressions as they apply to grep, egrep, text editors, and various scripting languages.

Next, the book offers complete documentation of Emacs, ex, and vi, the powerful editors whose command structure proves perennially difficult to learn. The commands, once again, appear alphabetically with statements of their respective purposes. Other popular utilities--sed, awk, nroff, troff, tbl, and several macro languages--follow. Code managers SCCS and RCS, rarely documented in Unix books, bring up the rear.

Users need to know what they're looking up or they won't find this book useful. Otherwise, Unix in a Nutshell's documentation is the best. --David Wall

Product Description
You may have seen UNIX quick-reference guides, but you've never seen anything like UNIX in a Nutshell. Not a scaled-down quick reference of common commands, UNIX in a Nutshell is a complete reference containing all commands and options, along with generous descriptions and examples that put the commands in context. For all but the thorniest UNIX problems, this one reference should be all the documentation you need. The second edition of UNIX in a Nutshell thoroughly covers System V Release 3, including commands that were added to Release 4 and additional commands that were added to Solaris 2.0. If you currently use either SVR3 or SVR4 or are planning to in the future, or if you're a Sun user facing the transition to Solaris, you'll want this book. UNIX in a Nutshell is the most comprehensive quickref on the market, a must for any UNIX user.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 444 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly; 2 edition (1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565920015
• ISBN-13: 978-1565920019
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #889,519 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great reference to keep near by!, September 13, 1999

By A Customer

The only reason that this book didn't get 5 stars is that it isn't what I'd consider a "bible". Its not recent, so many of the commands listed in there have additional switches or are now obsolete. But what is in there is great. I use it everytime I'm writing a shell script. It lacks extensive samples, so it isn't great for a beginner unless it is supplemented by a more in depth book. I use the reference section on awk and vi daily.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good referance book, April 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Unix in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference for System V & Solaris 2.0 (Paperback)

This book is great as a referance. Don't buy this is your looking for a step by step book. This book has ALOT of commands and shows you all the options associated with that command. It also has a few shells and certain shortcuts you can exacute within that shell. Overall its great as a referance. If you want to find out what a command does, just flip through the book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you're a beginner, don't buy this.....yet., April 19, 1999

By A Customer

If you're a beginner or even casual user of Unix then steer clear of this book. While the information contained within is excellent, it's more suited towards experienced users as it's not very well explained.

Also a major fault is the incredibly poor index. Frankly, it's one of the worst I've ever seen in any computer book. Pathetic. Instead of just indexing the terms, the descriptives should be listed as well.

But all is not lost. When you become used to Unix (although I cringe at the title, Unix For Dummies 3rd Edition is a very good starting point), Unix In A Nutshell is a thorough reference. Just don't plan on using the index!