next up previous contents index
Next: Operating on Files Up: Powerful Little Programs Previous: Powerful Little Programs

The Power of Unix

The power of Unix is hidden in small commands that don't seem too useful when used alone, but when combined with other commands (either directly or indirectly) produce a system that's much more powerful and flexible than most other operating systems. The commands I'm going to talk about in this chapter include sort, grep, more, cat, wc, spell, diff, head, and tail. Unfortunately, it isn't totally intuitive what these names mean right now.

Let's cover what each of these utilities do seperately and then I'll give some examples of how to use them together.gif



Converted on:
Mon Apr 1 08:59:56 EST 1996