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From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Help shell script programming
Message-ID: <1990Nov17.045306.23070@decuac.dec.com>
Date: 17 Nov 90 04:53:06 GMT
References: <1990Nov9.123319.1210@mdcbbs.com> <1990Nov13.233316.11906@mel.dit.csiro.au> <889@gagme.chi.il.us>
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In article <889@gagme.chi.il.us> grahj@gagme.chi.il.us (jim graham) writes:

>Two books --- one has already been mentioned (the K&R book on the ``UNIX
>Programming Environment'').  

	That's K&P, not K&R ! If you buy K&R all you'll read about is
C. Another good, but dated, book is S.R. Bourne's "the UNIX system"
which is less about shell programming than a kind of general look at a
lot of the (old) things in UNIX, such as nroff - the "ed" editor (which
some diehard gurus still use :), and some old-style C programming.

	I still like to refer people to K&P and Bourne because there's
a lot of the UNIX mentality in those books - the "small & simple" and
"modular without 16 pages of command-line options". It's an approach
the UNIX industry is clearly moving away from, to its detriment. The
K&P examples of programming are really interesting - the "hoc" project
is a little gem, that I feel covers all the essentials of how to design,
develop, and test a small C project under UNIX.

mjr.
-- 
"When choosing between two evils, give preference to the council of your
tummy over that of your testes. The history of mankind is full of disasters
that could have been averted by a good meal, followed by a nap on the couch."
		-Me, as explained to me by my wife's cat Strummer.