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Using csh & tcsh
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Author: Paul DuBois
List Price: $29.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 1565921321
Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates (01 July, 1995)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 88,858
Average Customer Rating: 3.57 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
One of the best book on LEARNING to USE the shell
I've seen many books on unix shells, however almost all the other books focus on shell programming instead of actually using shell to work more effectively and efficiently. This book fills the gap (hence the name "Using...". I personally recommend Zsh if you are looking for the most comprehensive shell. However zsh is too comprehensive and there is no book on it. Tcsh shell is an EXCELLENT shell to do your work (type in commands, listing files, and etc). It has all the essential goodies: command line completion, command-line editor, history, and etc. It found it more friendly than ksh and less complex than bash and/or zsh. This book teaches you step by step how to use the shell to do your every day work effectively. The author explains everything clearly which is more than what I can say about many books that just touches a little bit of using the shell as a command interpreter aspect of the shell as if everyone spend more time writing the shell scripts than using the command line. These aspect of the csh/tcsh are the basis for similar utilities in the other shells: ksh, bash, and zsh. I find that even if you use bash or zsh, you'll appreciate the information in the book. The other reason the author didn't write much on programming is because c-shell is less frequently used in shell programming because of the now famous posting of "C shell programming considered harmful", which is also on the book's homepage. If you have the patience to read through the book, you will find it an excellent investment of time. (The only other book I would say this for sure is the "Learning the vi Editor."
Rating: 4 out of 5
I can explain the wide disparity in reviews of this book!
The five reviews of this book that have come in ahead of minerange from 1 star to 5! The reason is simple, but the people panningthe book didn't explain (or understand?) the problem verywell.Here's the dope: a Unix shell is both an interactive commandinterpreter, and an environment for writing scripts, which arebasically programs using the interactive commands and some logicalcontrol structures to automate tasks that don't really need to be runinteractively. The author of this book, Paul Dubois, is of theopinion that neither csh nor tcsh are appropriate environments forshell scripting. I happen to disagree with him, at least insofar as Iteach a little shell scripting in tcsh in my sophomore level softwarecourse. However, his opinion is worthy...making the argument that cshand tcsh shouldn't be used for shell scripting. Dubois recommends shand perl for scripting. So it boils down to this: this is anexcellent book for learning how to make the most of the interactiveenvironment of csh and tcsh. It's loaded with neat tricks and goodinsights. And it's a particularly good reference for tcsh, whichusually gets little mention in other books. If, on the other hand,you want a book about shell scripting, save your money: THIS IS NOTTHE BOOK FOR YOU. It has no material on shell scripting.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Excellent summary of csh / tcsh
I've been a csh and tcsh user for many years now, using tcsh on a daily basis. This book taught me even more about my familiar shell. The author makes it clear that his intent is to make the reader more productive in the shell environment, and he provides all the information and examples necessary to do just that.As noted, this book does not cover csh-style shell scripting at all. If you're looking for a scripting reference, look elsewhere. If, however, you're looking to improve your overall knowledge of csh and tcsh as far as daily is concerned, look no further. When combined with the manpage, this book makes both an excellent tutorial and reference.
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