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Think UNIX by Jon Lasser

 

**+ Think UNIX

by Jon Lasser

Amazon Price: $23.99
Paperback - 295 pages 1st edition (July 2000)
Que; ISBN: 078972376X ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.75 x 9.09 x 7.29

• Sample Chapter
• Table of Contents
• Updates & Corrections also on the author page Think Unix errata

The problem with this book that an intended audience is pretty unclear. In no way this is an introductory book. A beginner will be confused and bewildered trying to learn Unix from this book. IMHO the only role in which this book can be useful is as an add-on to the existing library for those people who already know Unix a little bit and can buy books for the company money. After reading the book the simple question arises: "Why this book was so rushed to the market?"

In a current form the book is a way too short to be a decent introduction and many important things are just mentioned, not explained. Unix is such a complex system that an introductory book below 500 pages is immediately suspect. And in this case suspicions are correct: this is not a competitor to Sobel's books or "Unix Complete". Again, it probably might be a useful add-on to a better introductory book, but this book cannot stand on its own. 

The author is also suspect by being a coordinator of Bastille: a set of low quality Red Hat hardening scripts ;-).

A sample chapter is above average in quality, but might be the best chapter of the book.   Style is good and important points are properly emphasized, but still there are some problematic statements, for example:

The hard way to redirect STDERR relies on a feature present in only some Unix shells: numbered file handles. The Bourne, Korn, and Bash Shells all have this feature. The C Shell and tcsh don't. For more about shells, see Chapter 6. For now, simply type the following command to find out which shell you have:³

cat /etc/passwd|grep ^ username:|cut -d : -f 7

A blank after ^ is a typo and generally the whole regex should probably be in quotes. Besides NIS, this is incorrect for NIS+ or if any shell wrapper (for example SecureID) is installed. I also strongly doubt that "A file handle is an abstract representation of a file."  IMHO file handle is a pointer to a system block for a particular file.

not a life-saver, but surely a life-improver, October 23, 2000
Reviewer: Edward J. Hyer (see more about me) from Baltimore, Maryland USA

The reason I cannot call Mr. Lasser's book a "life-saver" is because I would not have perished from the Earth without it. Indeed, I probably would have figured almost all of the stuff in this book out, given six or seven years. But you gotta ask yourself, "at what cost?" In hair torn out (it's leaving fast enough, isn't it?), in hyperventilation (save that for the gym), in premature aging.

This book is not for Dummies. This book works best with people, as I may have indicated above, who Would Have Figured It Out by themselves. But while you may pretend to enjoy a rugged hike through the steeper parts of the learning curve, Mr. Lasser's book is like strapping on a jet-pack.

The book is conversational, sometimes funny (though it helps if you spend a lot of your time in front of computers), and extremely direct. If you are just curious about what this Unix thing might be good for, read the book slowly, learn a lot, and gain a solid foundation for becoming the captain of your computing destiny. If you have something you need to get done, read it quickly, learn-- well, a lot, and get where you're going in a hurry.

One caution: this book does expect that you will read it. It is not a ready reference, it is not designed for index-backward utilization. It is a short course in the skeletal framework of Unix, and not a hypertext instruction manual. If you are unaccustomed to reading as it was practiced before computer self-help books arrived to chaff the bookstores of our nation, you will not derive the maximum benefit from this book.

I recommend this book to (prospective) users of unix systems who take pleasure in reading, and need to learn a great deal very quickly.