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Hi people,

I thought this an appropriate place for this review I just sent out.

Enjoy ;-),

     ian

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UNIX Power Tools
by Jerry Peek, Tim O�Reilly, and Mike Loukides
O�Reilly and Associates/Bantam, March 1993, 1120 pages.
ISBN: 0-553-35402-7
US$59.95

Well this book is so hot off the presses that the local O�Reilly
distributor here in Oz (at least at the time of writing this review)
doesn�t yet have a price for it, let alone have it listed as being
available yet!!

So what exactly is it? Hmmm, perhaps the description from the book�s 
cover is a good place to start:

�UNIX Power Tools contains literally thousands of tips, scripts, and 
techniques that make using UNIX easier, more effective, and even more 
fun. It also provides powerful public domain programs that add even 
more flexibility to the standard UNIX command set. Every script and 
program is available on disk, so you can add right to your own set of 
UNIX utilities�

The authors have collected together from USEnet, from the O�Reilly 
nutshell series and from various contributors which include such 
UNIX/USEnet luminaries as Larry Wall, Jonathen Kamens, Gene Spafford 
and Tom Christiansen, a rich compendium of essential UNIX tidbits in a 
rather unique format.

One of the first things I noticed is that the book is extensively 
cross-referenced. A more apt description would be hypertext on paper 
with cross-links going anywhere from other sections in the book to 
the software to be found on the CDROM (more on that later) that comes 
with UNIX Power Tools. To aid the reader, the first few pages after
the table of contents is devoted to �how to read this book�. This 
gave me a chuckle straight away - a picture of a screw is there to 
warn you if a section may contain material that could �screw you� and 
a bomb warns of other possible dilemmas in using the books scripts 
(referred to as a cross-referenced screw :-)

The authors are at pains to point out that the material is meant to 
be browsed. There is no set order to be followed (hence the hypertext 
feel) and in fact the book seems to be more like an almanac or 
magazine with lots of factual, short articles that can lead you on
to new knowledge as you follow your nose using the cross-referencing
information.

My first impressions would include:

- big ... weighs in at ~1100 pages

- punchy, informative style.

- very thorough. It contains most of the UNIX tips & advice
  that I've heard of or read on USEnet over the years condensed into
  book form. Most of the sections in the 55(!!) chapters are very short
  ie less than a page.

  There are nine parts:

  o Making youself at home.
    How to set up the shell(s), prompt, terminal, password etc.

  o Let the Computer do the Dirty Work
    Using the command line, aliases, history, job control & I/O

  o Working with the Filesystem
    Moving around, using find, file management ....

  o Looking Inside Files
    regular expressions, comparing files, working with text.

  o Text Editing
    Using vi, emacs, sed, miscellaneous stuff

  o Managing Processes
    Starting, stopping, killing processes, timing, delayed execution

  o Terminals and Printers
    Setting serial lines, terminals, printing,

  o Shell Programming
    Programming for the unitiated and initiated :-) script debugging,
    and �C Shell Programming ... NOT� (that gave me a laugh :-)

  o Miscellaneous
    various stuff including what�s on the CD & how to access/install it

- the CDROM has tons of stuff on it.  eg PD utilities such as perl, gnu 
  emacs, pbmplus, psutils, sc, ispell, sc etc etc (most of them being 
  very up to date) as well as all of the scripts in the book.

  ALSO, since the CD is in ISO 9660 format it can be used on lots of 
  machines. There are precompiled binaries for SunOS 4.1.1, Ultrix 4.1, 
  AIX 3.2, HP-UX 8.07, Xenix 2.3.2 & SCO Unix 3.2.x.

All up I�d call this book one of the _must_haves_ for those of you that
really want to stretch their UNIX knowledge that little bit further. 
With that said you�d all better start saving towards getting it .....
 
I luv it already ....


      Ian Hoyle
      16th March, 1993


   /\/\     :  Ian Hoyle,  Senior Research Scientist
  / / /\    :  Image Analysis Group
 / / /  \   :  BHP Research - Melbourne Laboratories
/ / / /\ \  :  245 Wellington Rd, Mulgrave, 3170, AUSTRALIA
\ \/ / / /  :  Phone    +61-3-560-7066
 \  / / /   :  E-mail   ianh@resmel.bhp.com.au
  \/\/\/    :
            : "Ooooo I hate that wascaly wabbit"
            :               -- Elmer Fudd