On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 12:44, Birt, Jeffrey wrote:
> I agree with Les when he pointed out that man pages, if they exist, are
> a reference; (if you don't know the subject already they are useless and
> very frustrating.) But I strongly disagree that one must have interment
> knowledge of the command line, I/O redirection, and environment
> variables before starting a program. That's like saying you must learn
> how the internal combustion engine works before driving a car.
No, it's more like knowing that you can adjust the seat so you
can reach the steering wheel and that you can and should adjust
the mirrors to see before driving. Otherwise you'll be very
surprised if you include any shell metacharacters on your
command line (like *?|<>\"', etc.) or try to find what they
do in some man page other than the shell's. Other programs
only see the command line after shell processing is complete,
thus learning them once will help you with every command
you type. What you can do on the shell command line is
exactly the same as what you can do in what you would call
a shell script, because they are the same thing.
If your only interaction with a computer is through a GUI
that only allows commands the GUI author thought you might
want to use, you might not be helped much by learning the
services provided by the shell and taking advantage of
them, but otherwise it is the right place to start.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
