Bad command line habits and good ones to replace them

[foxfirefey]

UNIX tips: Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits, as follows:

• Make directory trees in a single swipe.
• Change the path; do not move the archive.
• Combine your commands with control operators.
• Quote variables with caution.
• Use escape sequences to manage long input.
• Group your commands together in a list.
• Use xargs outside of find .
• Know when grep should do the counting -- and when it should step aside.
• Match certain fields in output, not just lines.
• Stop piping cats.

I learned a couple of things from this one!

Comments

[afuna]

Ooooh interesting, thanks! *bookmarks to read later*

[floatboth]

Also, $(command) instead of `command`.
And ack is better than grep.
Get moreutils and pipetk.

Thank you for this! :-)

[babysprite]

It's always good to pick tips and tricks, wherever they can be found.

The point with me is that I can always learn more to be a better UNIX user.

[vaxhacker]

I never understood why so many people got in the habit of doing "cat file | ...". These are good for people to know. :)

[tara_hanoi]

Yeah, it always gets me when I see people do "cat $file | more" in work.

That said, while I'll always do "$cmd $file | ..." there is one thing to be said for the "cat $file | ..." style: when you're working on your super-huge command-line and you're still fine-tuning all the commands you're piping through, it's easier to leave the "cat $file" bit untouched, and then chop and change your filter commands ("Hmmm, maybe I want to swap the first grep and awk"), and tidy it up when you're done. If you're just testing how you're going to order your commands, then an extra fork/exec and pipe isn't going to kill you. :)

[tcpip]

Listing #4 is a very good habit which I should cultivate.

And nobody should pipe a cat. Cats are perfectly capable of getting into pipes themselves.

[foxfirefey]

Oh, cats. Is there nowhere you won't get into!