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From: silvert@dalcs.UUCP (Bill Silvert)
Newsgroups: net.sources.bugs
Subject: Re: Programs from Bourne (field) and K&P (pick and zap)
Message-ID: <1504@dalcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-May-85 14:08:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: dalcs.1504
Posted: Fri May  3 14:08:11 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 4-May-85 01:15:01 EDT
References: <1491@dalcs.UUCP>
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada
Lines: 48

> Here are several utilities from Bourne's "The Unix System" and from
> Kernighan & Pike's "The Unix Programming Environment".  

I have received several requests for information about the utilities
field, pick, and zap, which I put on net.sources a while back.
I didn't know that there were so many individuals without these books
by Bourne, and by Kernighan & Pike!

I didn't document the programs mainly because I felt it was a useful
service to help others avoid having to type in several pages of
listings, but I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from buying
the books -- that would be a ripoff of the authors.  Bourne's book
actually includes the manual entry for field, but I haven't typed it
into my machine, and I won't distribute it.  Here is a brief
description of what the utilities do, and what I have changed.
If you want to know more, buy the books.

field: filter which prints out the fields of its colon-separated
input.  Try a command like `field 1 6 4 5 < /etc/passwd' to see what
it does.  In fact, `field 1 </etc/passwd' is an easy way to get a
list of users.

pick: prints its arguments, then passes those you approve of to the
standard output.  Thus rm `pick *` is equivalent to rm -i *.  I use
it in constructions like
	mv `pick *` newdir
to move most of the files in a directory to another.
Answer y or n to pick.

zap: interactive process killer.  To kill background process with
`word' in the command line type `zap command' and zap will list all
processes with this word (including itself), and kill those you
respond to with `y'.  With no arguments, zap lists and can kill all
of your processes.

I have added a feature to zap -- if you are superuser, you can zap
any process on the system!  If not, it lists only your processes.

By the way, Bourne suggests modifying field to accept certain
options, such as using a separator other than a colon.  I would find
this useful, especially if the separator coudl be white space.  If
anyone has done this enhancement, I would appreciate a copy of the
code.
-- 
Bill Silvert
Marine Ecology Lab.
Dartmouth, NS
dalcs!biomel!bill