Unix for the Impatient

A UNIX handbook for people who need to learn UNIX quickly--people who are interested in UNIX as a tool rather than an object of study. It can serve both as a means of learning UNIX and as a reference source once one has mastered a topic. Concise and direct, this book condenses a lot of information into a modest number of pages.

"IF YOU HAVE EVER STRUGGLED to use and understand UNIX through system manuals or by bothering anyone who knows more than you do, you will appreciate this book. If you seem to always be battling UNIX and suspect that it can actually perform for you if you only knew what was available, you will love this book. If you are thinking about using UNIX, you must have this book. Even for those who know a lot about UNIX, the book may serve as a concise reference."
--IEEE Software, on the first edition of this best-selling work

Thoroughly updated to account for recent developments, the Second Edition of UNIX for the Impatient is is an in-depth, comprehensive guide to UNIX -- a handbook you can use both for learning and as a ready reference. Clear, concise, and readable, the book is written for the technically oriented UNIX user who doesn't want to wade through verbose tutorials but isn't already an expert. Its functional organization makes it easy to find the right tool for any task, with a complete alphabetical summary providing fast lookup of commands, options, and subcommands. An extensive discussion of underlying UNIX concepts, supplemented by a glossary, enables even a UNIX beginner to penetrate the mysteries of UNIX terminology.

The Second Edition is based on the IEEE POSIX.2 Standard now widely adopted by UNIX vendors and implementors. Descriptions of commands and facilities have been extensively revised to conform to the POSIX specifications and extended to cover the entire set of POSIX.2 user utilities. As before, important System V, BSD, and GNU variations and enhancements are also presented.

Topics include user utilities, shells, the vi editor and other standard editors, the GNU Emacs editor, Internet access tools, the awk language, and the X Window System. New topics in the Second Edition include the Korn Shell, internationalization, the World Wide Web, newsreaders, and system administration from the user's perspective. The Emacs coverage has been updated to Emacs Version 19 and now covers the use of Emacs under X. Background material now includes popular new systems such as Linux and FreeBSD.

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