Underground Guide to UNIX(TM): Slightly Askew Advice from a UNIX? Guru

This book is for intermediate users--those who can get into Unix and knock around until they accomplish their goals, but who don't know enough about the operating system to really enjoy it. Author John Montgomery, with his fun prose, communicates the pleasure that can come from knowing how to use a powerful tool. He gives you plenty of how information and lots of why information, but it's the humor and mystery he mixes in that make you start to love Unix the way he does.

For example, The Underground Guide to Unix devotes several big, well-written chapters to files, appropriately treating them as the center of the Unix universe. The chapters contain practical explanations of umask, chmod, rm, grep, and the rest of the Unix file-management tools. The text editors vi and Emacs receive adequate explanations--although conceptual diagrams would help--and even little-used ex gets some attention. In the shell programming section, the book explains the differences among the Bourne, C, and Korn shells. Montgomery gives several workarounds that make certain shells act like other shells.

The Internet receives its due attention here. The guide exposes you to mail and mailx, as well as the application of vi to e-mail. The author spends too much time on the structure of an e-mail address, something that's now common knowledge. Mosaic gets only cursory coverage, but TCP/IP networks get explained in full depth. The Underground Guide to Unix concludes with a troubleshooting guide, an abbreviated command reference, listings of Perl programs for text manipulation, and a brief but informed discussion of Unix security.