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Recently, I had to translate a csh shell script to bash, and I’m not fluent in either. I found the “BASH Programming – Introduction HOW-TO” to be a helpful reference to understanding how things worked in bash. It’s cool to be learning new stuff!
It was five years ago tomorrow that lzip version 1.0 was released. Lossy Data Compression, with compression ratios far beyond those available with conventional zip, gzip or even bzip technologies, should have taken the world by storm. Instead, they have ended up in this dusty little corner of SourceForge.net. Check out the site and learn [...]
Andrew MacNeill reports Microsoft Releases Windows 2003 SP1 quickly followed by
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 – Can’t Find Server and other upgrade woes “It’s this kind of thing that makes upgrades so traumatic for users. ” and Windows 2003 SP1 Broke My ASP.Net. “ARGH!! The saga continues… Back in December I had this problem [...]
OSNews reports “Ubuntu Linux 5.04 release candidate. The release candidate of Ubuntu Linux 5.04 is available.”
Ubuntu is getting a lot of attention as an up-and-coming distribution. It is Debian-based, has a slick interface, comes with a try-before-you-commit Live CD, and it’s free for the download. BitTorrent links are available at the web site above. Took [...]
Google had a distinctive logo today, as they do for many holidays and events. No explanation on the site that I could find, but Wikipedia reveals it’s Vincent’s birthday. (Update: corrected link)
Tom Yager’s weekly column in InfoWorld: Application development starts out: “The IT generalist makes a comeback. I’ve been seeing the title “IT generalist” coming back into use. It’s a welcome sight. I recall the generalist from the days when minicomputers and mainframes were being traded for less costly Unix microcomputers. Back then, the generalist was [...]
In “Return of the Mac,” Paul Graham writes: “All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs.”
At the LinuxWorld show in Boston last month, Apple had a small understated booth, with a couple of company reps out front, and a plain table with a Mac Mini, an XServe and an XServe RAID up [...]
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports “Microsoft’s Grand Plan To Go Vertical. Can Microsoft transform itself from a product-focused company into a solutions-oriented one? Top brass are betting that it can.”
Microsoft is wise to diversify. From consumer products like MSN and Xbox to hardware like mice and keyboards, Microsoft is spreading its bets around. [...]
Ed Foster’s Gripelog points out that ‘Lifetime’ promises by vendors are rarely the good deal that they sound like: Promise of Lifetime Service Isn’t Sirius. “We already know how some manufacturers think a lifetime warranty is one that’s only good…”
From the Bash Reference Manual, available online for Free, of course:
A Unix shell is both a command interpreter and a programming language…
While executing commands is essential, most of the power (and complexity) of shells is due to their embedded programming languages. Like any high-level language, the shell provides variables, flow control constructs, quoting, and functions.
These [...]
