BKKRNSHL.RVW 931207 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 103 Morris Street, Suite A Sebastopol, CA 95472 800-998-9938 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 info@ora.com "Learning the Korn Shell", Rosenblatt, 1993, 1-56592-054-6 billr@panix.com Most corporate "users" do not really know how to use the computer: they know one or more programs. (As only one example of this, I cite the case of the user who was very confident of having all necessary computer background after five years of usage. When I asked for specifics on how to delete a file, this individual gave me a keystroke perfect sequence - for deleting a file from within the MS-Word word processor.) Gurus and wizards, of course, are perfectly content to do anything that they might wish to do by patching the operating system kernel with a text editor. This leaves the group sometimes known as "power users" and system administrators as those who "use" the computer through the operating system command interpreter or shell. UNIX allows a choice of shells, and removes the close ties between the shell and the operating system. (In practice, the same thing can be done with MS- DOS, by replacing the COMMAND.COM file with another interpreter.) The Korn shell is becoming the shell of choice for many users and systems, and therefore, to a very real extent, this book is, in fact, an introduction to UNIX. This is not, however, a book for the neophyte. Another O'Reilly book, "Learning the UNIX Operating System," (cf BKLRNUNX.RVW) is recommended as prior reading for the rank novice. In fact, while Rosenblatt's work starts out at a reasonably basic level, it rapidly accelerates in complexity of material. For those who have some computer background, and want to start to really "learn UNIX," this is an excellent introduction. Think of it as a workbook rather than a textbook, though. If the material starts to become too difficult, step back and practice what you know until you are thoroughly comfortable with it. The next chapter can be your next step into UNIX, and the entire journey doesn't have to be done in a day. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKKRNSHL.RVW 931207 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag