SRK's UNIX Tool Chest

Unix is an incredible operating system. The philosophy was inverted (for its time): provide basic utilities, a simple structure (everything is a file) and simple interfaces (e.g. a file is records with \n and that is it) and then let users develop comples packages. Herewith find SOLUTIONS for "real life" problems undertaken with Unix. In order to get motivated you may want to first check out some handy tools first.

SRK Command-line tools

Unix Commands

file Determine type of file notes
cp copy files (for future tools) notes
cat output lines sequentially notes
ls list directory notes
echo print line notes
wc Count the number of lines, words, characters notes
head Display lines at the start of the file notes
tail Display lines at the bottom of the file & nbsp notes
kill kill bash prorcess notes
tee Write to file and to terminal notes
{} (brace expansion) Generate numerical or alphabetic sequence notes
nl Number lines of existing files notes
seq Generate alpha-numeric sequences notes
jot random numbers & alphanumeric sequences notes
quirky shuf,rev,tac,look,yes,sl,cowsay,figlet notes
cut Extract characters and fields notes
comm find lines common to two (sorted) files notes
xargs Feed argument list to a utility notes
tr translate (substitute, delete, squeeze) notes
sort sort columns notes
uniq identify unique lines in a file, also histogram notes
pr Pagination, column to matrix, merging files notes
column columnar display notes
paste Paste columns side by side notes
join Join two files on common (sorted) key notes
find find files notes
od octal dump of file notes

Tools

blanklines Deleting blank lines notes
quick information, quickly notes
iconv get rid of non-ASCII characters notes
textutil convert text files (txt,doc,htm...) notes
convertconvert image formats (png,pdf,jpg) notes
pdf utilities pdftk | pdftotext | pdf suite
jq JSON query notes
csvkit tools for csv files notes
ffmpeg video file editor notes | link
repairing fits files notes

bash

Like any other language bash is best learnt by homework whose solutions are inpsired by prior examples. I found this site thoughtfully constructed. Bookmark this website. The more you learn about bash the more useful this manual becomes.

> >& redirection
$var editing variables, positional parameters notes
$*, $@ special parameters notes
$(..) command substition notes
".. " '..' quouting rules notes
(...) subshells notes
{...} ganging commands notes
URL encoding notes
regular expression tester I | regular expression tester II

grep | sed | awk

Facilities

ADS | ADS (API)
Caltech Library
Chandra X-ray Observatory csChandra|wsCXO
Simbad
TNS
XMM-Netwon csEPIC

Cheat sheets

Linux 101 Hacks (fruitful way to send a lazy afternoon)
Guru99 (tutorial well suited to beginners; well laid out)
Sanfoundary (well organized)
Geek Stuff Gems here and there
Unix School (thoughtful examples with step-by-step explanation; need to browse, though)
Geek for geeks Search for unix commands e.g. "zip command"
Blog: Unknown

Attending a meeting. Utterly bored? Challenge yourself to see whether you can write the fewest characters one liner