Book details of 'Underground Guide to UNIX: Slightly Askew Advice from a UNIX Guru'

Title	Underground Guide to UNIX: Slightly Askew Advice from a UNIX Guru
Author(s)	John Montgomery
ISBN	0201406535
Language	English
Published	January 1995
Publisher	Addison-Wesley Pub Co

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Underground Guide to UNIX: Slightly Askew Advice from a UNIX Guru':

Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
This book is for intermediate users--those who can get into Unix and knock around until they accomplish their goals, but who don't know enough about the operating system to really enjoy it. Author John Montgomery, with his fun prose, communicates the pleasure that can come from knowing how to use a powerful tool. He gives you plenty of how information and lots of why information, but it's the humor and mystery he mixes in that make you start to love Unix the way he does. For example, The Underground Guide to Unix devotes several big, well-written chapters to files, appropriately treating them as the center of the Unix universe. The chapters contain practical explanations of umask, chmod, rm, grep, and the rest of the Unix file-management tools. The text editors vi and Emacs receive adequate explanations--although conceptual diagrams would help--and even little-used ex gets some attention. In the shell programming section, the book explains the differences among the Bourne, C, and Korn shells. Montgomery gives several workarounds that make certain shells act like other shells. The Internet receives its due attention here. The guide exposes you to mail and mailx, as well as the application of vi to e-mail. The author spends too much time on the structure of an e-mail address, something that's now common knowledge. Mosaic gets only cursory coverage, but TCP/IP networks get explained in full depth. The Underground Guide to Unix concludes with a troubleshooting guide, an abbreviated command reference, listings of Perl programs for text manipulation, and a brief but informed discussion of Unix security.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
The advice about whom this book is for is very up-front. This is for the power user, the nerd, the techie. This is for those who may have had only the merest introduction to UNIX, and want some more depth. The material is broadly based, including an overview of email and the Internet. It starts with some pointers about *which* UNIX you are running, though it deals primarily with BSD and SVR4. Montgomery's humour probably won't help you understand the material, but it will make the book easier and more fun to read. This is good, because the layout is disorganized. Sections on a given item (like vi) crop up in different chapters, and you will have to work to get it all together. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995
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Book description:

It's no coincidence that UNIX is a four-letter word-- the "problem child" of operating systems is notoriously arcane and inscrutable. In "The Underground Guide to UNIX", scrutability expert John Montgomery takes you on an emotional roller-coaster ride through the vagaries of this hard-to-master yet incomprehensible operating system. You'll find serious information on getting the most out of the parts of UNIX you use every day, as well as detailed advice on working better and faster, whatever flavor of UNIX you're stuck with... uh, prefer. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll buy copies for every room in the house. (NOTE TO EDITOR: too blatant?) Learn how to: master the most popular UNIX text editors: vi, emacs, ex, and sed; use and abuse basic UNIX security-- hide potentially incriminating files like love.letter or resume.doc, or search your boss's files for your name and key words like "problem employee"; access the Internet and use ftp, telnet, gopher, and Mosaic to get completely frivolous information from almost anywhere in the world; program the shells (C, Korn, and Bourne) to do whatever the heck you want; and oh so much more! Every page has something you can use immediately. This book is packed wall to wall with advice, warnings, tips, bug reports, workarounds, and the kind of nitty-gritty explanations that could come only from someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes UNIX.