[colug-432] The UNIX Philosophy

[jep200404 at columbus.rr.com]

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:51:39 -0400, Stephen Potter <spp at unixsa.net> wrote:

> ... for CLI usage, how often do you really do more than two commands?

As you have heard from several posters: often. 

We are following the UNIX philosophy. Instead of having one big 
program to do everything, we have many small programs. Each 
little program does one thing well. The power comes from how we 
combine the little programs to do complex things. The pipe is an 
important part of how we combine them. 

A classic book about doing this is: 

   The UNIX Programming Environment
   by Kernighan and Pike[2]

A good book about the UNIX philosophy is: 

   The UNIX Philosophy
   by Mike Gancarz[1]

Both are good reads. The first book will make you powerful. 

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Mike_Gancarz:_The_UNIX_Philosophy
[2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_UNIX_Programming_Environment