I've worked in IT for 20+ years, and this is one of the best books I've found. What an index! And even the text of the book has reference "pointers" (for lack of a better term) sprinkled throughout it. Even if you don't initially find what you are looking for, you can usually read a couple of paragraphs and find a link to what you need. This book is a "keeper!"

Back in 1995 I started working at a client and all the UNIX guys had this book on their desk. I was a newbie at that time and the book helped me out a lot. It was clear and to the point. There is so much useful information. Recently I got my own copy because I had to jump back into the UNIX world and having this book around make me feel like I can handle any task that may be required. This is a must have if you want to dabble or become a pro in UNIX.

Here is a quote taken from _Unix_Power_Tools_ which demonstrates the

attitude, shared by the authors, that unix allows you to make things

easier. "''Ugh!', you say, 'that's just what I hate about UNIX. All

these long filenames and options I can't remember. Who wants to type

all that stuff!' Precisely. That's why UNIX makes it so easy to

create custom commands, in the form of aliases and shell scripts."



Unix Power Tools is true to the spirit and philosophy of unix in

focusing on the command line environment with its rich abundance of

command interpreters, shell languages, system utilities, commands, and

the like. This is the realm of real power.



The book is aimed squarely at the user who wants to learn what's under

the hood of the unix (and Linux) system. It's not about how to change

your wallpaper or install the latest media player, or configure your

desktop, although this new edition may touch on these topics, too.

It's really about using unix to greatest advantage, about tapping its

real power, the power of its simplicity, of its flexibility, of

tapping into I/O streams, and using the tool-box approach to solving

real problems. It's about using 'pipes', 'redirection', and

'filters', to automate the big jobs.



My copy of this book is tattered from all the use it's had over the

last ten years. I'm always hunting it down, as my associates at work

are constantly borrowing it to help them solve a problem. That's

okay, though. I am ordering another copy, just for me. I'm curious

to see this new edition, which I understand has broader coverage of

the various unix flavors, including Linux, which I run

at home.



I would recommend this book to those who find unix intimidating, as

well as to the unix enthusiast. For anyone who ever wondered what the

fuss over unix was about, this book will certainly bring on an

epiphany. For between these covers is the greatest accumulation of

unix wisdom and know-how to be found in any book. The shear volume is

enough to elicit awe. But that's only part of its value, because such

an enormous accumulation of material might normally overwhelm the

reader, leaving him frustrated and unenlightened. Happily, this book

is so well organized, and the material so pleasingly presented, that

anyone will find it a pleasure to browse through and to mine

repeatedly for those precious tips, tricks, and methods that make

using unix so rewarding.



This is admittedly a pound heavy volume, and might be expected to

contain a lot of chaff with the grain. I have not found it so. The

authors have chosen the material well, and know their subject so

intimately and thoroughly, that I am left with a feeling of profound

respect. This is, in short, a book that is worthy of its subject; a

truly great book for a great OS.



I read another reviewer who avers this is the one book he would take

with him to a deserted island. I concur. It has taught me more than

any other unix book, and has made my work more efficient, and most

importantly, more interesting. I paid full retail for my copy of

Power Tools, and at the time, I thought it was a lot, but it has

repaid me many times over. It's the most indispensable unix book on

my shelf; a real gem.

Here is a quote taken from _Unix_Power_Tools_ which demonstrates the
attitude, shared by the authors, that unix allows you to make things
easier. "''Ugh!', you say, 'that's just what I hate about UNIX. All
these long filenames and options I can't remember. Who wants to type
all that stuff!' Precisely. That's why UNIX makes it so easy to
create custom commands, in the form of aliases and shell scripts."

Unix Power Tools is true to the spirit and philosophy of unix in
focusing on the command line environment with its rich abundance of
command interpreters, shell languages, system utilities, commands, and
the like. This is the realm of real power.

The book is aimed squarely at the user who wants to learn what's under
the hood of the unix (and Linux) system. It's not about how to change
your wallpaper or install the latest media player, or configure your
desktop, although this new edition may touch on these topics, too.
It's really about using unix to greatest advantage, about tapping its
real power, the power of its simplicity, of its flexibility, of
tapping into I/O streams, and using the tool-box approach to solving
real problems. It's about using 'pipes', 'redirection', and
'filters', to automate the big jobs.

My copy of this book is tattered from all the use it's had over the
last ten years. I'm always hunting it down, as my associates at work
are constantly borrowing it to help them solve a problem. That's
okay, though. I am ordering another copy, just for me. I'm curious
to see this new edition, which I understand has broader coverage of
the various unix flavors, including Linux, which I run
at home.

I would recommend this book to those who find unix intimidating, as
well as to the unix enthusiast. For anyone who ever wondered what the
fuss over unix was about, this book will certainly bring on an
epiphany. For between these covers is the greatest accumulation of
unix wisdom and know-how to be found in any book. The shear volume is
enough to elicit awe. But that's only part of its value, because such
an enormous accumulation of material might normally overwhelm the
reader, leaving him frustrated and unenlightened. Happily, this book
is so well organized, and the material so pleasingly presented, that
anyone will find it a pleasure to browse through and to mine
repeatedly for those precious tips, tricks, and methods that make
using unix so rewarding.

This is admittedly a pound heavy volume, and might be expected to
contain a lot of chaff with the grain. I have not found it so. The
authors have chosen the material well, and know their subject so
intimately and thoroughly, that I am left with a feeling of profound
respect. This is, in short, a book that is worthy of its subject; a
truly great book for a great OS.

I read another reviewer who avers this is the one book he would take
with him to a deserted island. I concur. It has taught me more than
any other unix book, and has made my work more efficient, and most
importantly, more interesting. I paid full retail for my copy of
Power Tools, and at the time, I thought it was a lot, but it has
repaid me many times over. It's the most indispensable unix book on
my shelf; a real gem.

I found this book very much useful as I am not a regular unix programmer. This book is good for knowing all unix commands and shell scripting.

I know this seems abit pricey but its worth it. I dont have the attention span needed to read most books cover-to-cover. Even though this book is huge I have browsed it all and read most of it. Multiple times! Each time I find some new tidbit to use.

I'm an analog IC designer moonlighting as a linux hacker (I'm actually addicted). I try to build software, write shell scripts and customize my desktop to death. I picked up this book a year or two back and I think I've probably used it almost every single day to look up something or the other. I probably own about 20 linux related books (more than my engineering books) but this is the one that I would run out with when the firealarm sounds. Here is my short summary of my feelings about this book.
- this book (primarily) caters to intermediate to advanced users
- I would still recommend this for linux beginners as a reference to check up when every other beginner book fails. There are introductory chapters on shell scripting which could put some of the dedicated shell scripting books to shame
- One of the fundamental holy grail that linux books try to achieve (and in which they often fail) is to find a good balance between breadth and depth - both qualities which the subject of Unix do not shy away from. So a Linux beginner picks up an introductory book which addresses just one linux issue and before he knows it-he has gathered enough knowledge and the book just picks up dust. Or he could pick up a book that claims to be a reference and skims over all the items with little depth and boom when he really needs information about a particular topic he finds that the book is too shallow. The "Unix Power Tools" book, I'm happy to say achieves this good balance between depth and breadth in very good measure. Ex. When I was confused about the intricacies of bash quoting or I/O redirecition, this book came to my rescue. The Unix command "find" which was buried under a 4-year old alias for me owing to it's complexities, suddenly developed a fascination for me after I discovered it's myriad use and value from the multiple pages that this book devoted to it's demystifcation.
- I bought the O'Reilly books - "Linux in a Nutshell" and "Essential system Administration" with the purpose of using them as references - The first one was just too shallow for my requirements and taste and I use it basically as a replacement for online man pages. The second one has it's very niche, but only in specific circumstances. So they have been put to use probably just 1/10th of what the "Power Tools" book has been put to
- I'm not a guy who is driven to write reviews i.e unless I am totally ecstatic or totally disgusted with a product and you probably have guessed where I stand with this one. I waited 1 or two years and I somehow felt that I owe this review to this book.

This book is the godfather of *nix system reference books. Absolutely stellar! Best in breed.

I actually made two attempts to follow it and the first time it was too much for me. This book is going quite deep with many conceptions and I was lacking of the background. Then I came across "UNIX Essentials" DVD and this thing took me to the point I can read and follow and APPRECIATE this book.
The book is take you from being "beginner" to be a someone whose opinion counts. It makes you reading better article, follow modern conception and understand scripts much clearly. If one is seeking to go up, improve his/her knowledge it is definitely worthy and valuable reading.

I actually made two attempts to follow it and the first time it was too much for me. This book is going quite deep with many conceptions and I was lacking of the background. Then I came across "UNIX Essentials" DVD and this thing took me to the point I can read and follow and APPRECIATE this book.
The book is take you from being "beginner" to be a someone whose opinion counts. It makes you reading better article, follow modern conception and understand scripts much clearly. If one is seeking to go up, improve his/her knowledge it is definitely worthy and valuable reading.

This is one of the best book on UNIX available. It is not for a beginner though. If you are good enough to understand the conceptions and follow the examples it will serve you very well. If you are looking for something that gives you more initial kick, try "UNIX Essentials" DVD it is nice course to start with. The video takes you to the point that you will NEED this book to progress further.

This book is a great reference for Unix/Linux system administrators or powerusers (as well as Mac OS X which has a BSD base.) This isn't meant to be read straight through, but referenced when there is a problem that you can't just seem to find or recall the answer to. In Unix, there are multiple ways to do things and this book will also show you some of the other ways to accomplish tasks in Unix that you might not already know, potentially saving some significant time. This is one book you will probably be referring to often if you manage or use Unix based systems and also helps to build upon knowledge gap areas.

The only drawback to the book is that it contains so much information, that finding the tidbit you need in a hurry can be tedious, espcially if you are in a time crunch. This isn't a sifnificant problem because the authors thoughtfully arrange it in a consistent and reasonably coherent manner, but some new users may have difficulty determining how to describe their problem in a way that matches the indexing.

This is one of those books which I refer to often. Whether it is that thing about shell variables or just for finding some obscure command. It is a book which will go well with an expert as well a beginner trying to find her way around. The website has an awesome collection of tools which can be added easily to one's toolkit. What I like the most about this book is that it has covered all the popular flavors of UNIX so it will make a permanent place on the desk for itself. The chapters on security and internet access, groups a lot of commands and information making it very easy to use and find. Even though I was using UNIX for years and thought of myself as an advanced user, a power user if you may. I found this book humbling and learned at least three different ways of doing the same task.
Niloufer Tamboly, CISSP

Let's get a couple things straight: one, I buy a lot of books; two, I read about 15% of each one. This book is one of the few exceptions. It already had 56 reviews when I wrote this, but after picking it up for the 84th time, I felt compelled to add my five stars. Buy with confidence.

This book is not a general tutorial, so if that is all you are after, then is not for you. However, if you are a novice or you are an expert, or in between, then this book is an essential resource to have amongst your collection.

There are so many useful scripts, tools, and tutorials woven together is different topic areas. There are also a lot of fun stuff thrown in, like how to configure your c-shell prompt to be like the familiar DOS prompt showing directory path.

Interestingly, in some parts, I find it to be a good reference and sometimes the only reference for certain tools and commands. For example, this book extensively covered and illustrated the 'find' command, which is very powerful and often used in the industy. There were not only good explanations, but comprehensive examples as well. I could not find any reference of 'find' with examples in any other published book. I think this book gives impressive coverage of other essential, yet seldom, documented tools.

The power drill on the cover of UNIX Power Tools is very appropriate for this book, which is a collection of articles, various information, and tips on how to more effectively use the UNIX operating system. UNIX is of course a complex OS, and yet even novices can use UNIX after learning a few simple commands. And yet one can also harness much more of UNIX's power by learning its complexities. This book is an excellent reference, showing just how much more useful UNIX can be when you keep learning more about it. It is full of tips and information designed to make your time using UNIX to be more efficient and even fun.

With a book of over 1000 pages, there's something on virtually every topic of UNIX here. And you can "jump around" to different parts of the book to learn more about a particular feature or "power tool." Vi for example has always been a favorite of mine, much to the chagrin of some of my friends, and there's a chapter or two of Vi "tricks" to try out. Emacs is a screen editor that I also like, and again there's a chapter devoted to "EMACS tricks." Of course in a book this size, just about everything imaginable regarding the UNIX operating system is covered here, everything from customizing and interacting with your shell environment, to working with files and directories, the UNIX kernel, lots of information about scripting, to security issues.

Whether you're a UNIX programmer, sys admin, or "UNIX hobbyist" like me, this book is an invaluable resource.

as I recall I read this book from cover to cover and it was an extremely useful book. I highly recommend this book for anyone doing system administration type work or hobby.

Have to say it; but if you've been let down by these other books --i.e. going into long beginer tips and how to "set up KDE" and the likes ...... this one book probably has more usefull information than the 31 other books I've collected over the past year or so on the same info .......... BUY IT@!!!!!!
I don't regret it for a second ..... everyday i've had it (about 3 months) i've randomly opened a page and learned something that usually i didn't even know was possible ( and I've been using Unix/Linux for almost 4 years or more -- Linux meaning Slackware, and Unix meaning the BSD's )
I'm rather impressed none-the-less!!!!

I received the book at our last meeting and proceeded to read thru it. There is tons of interesting facts and quick fixes for everything that you did not know, But I thought this probably should have been a Book 2 of the "Linux Server Hacks" rather than this. I felt that the authors padded the book with not needed information for the point being made. Overall thou I would recommend this book to my friends and other Linux desktop users.
~Brett~

Now in a completely updated and expanded third edition, Unix Power Tools by Shelley Powers, Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly and Mike Loukides is an exhaustive, 1116-page instructional guide to scripts, techniques, and useful applications for programming in Unix, including xterm, X Windows, tips for optimizing disk space, creating custom commands in vi, using GNU Emacs, shell interpretation for scripting, pattern matching, redirecting input and output, and much, much more. An extensive and comprehensive resource, Unix Power Tools is filled from cover to cover with clear instructions, sample codes, and just about everything even the most novice beginning Unix programmer needs to get started -- or that the advanced Unix programmer may need to look up.

Unix Power Tools, an apt title not meant to be redundant (Unix is THE power-user's operating system, after all) has been the ShopSmith manual or the Unix Almanac since it first appeared in the early 1990s. The second edition appeared in 1999, and with the amazing, if not predicted, growth of Unix and expansion into many flavors; it's fitting that a 3rd edition should appear now. Over half of the articles have been revised since that last edition to include information pertaining to many of the smaller but ground-gaining Unix's such as Linux, freeBSD, and Mac OS X's Darwin.

This is a huge book; thus the need for four authors! For a network administrator who understands Unix, and who is contemplating the merging of Mac OS X Server and Client systems into their network, this book should pay for itself in dividends. I was impressed with how thoroughly this book covers the multitude of topics contained within. Everything from mastering the various editors to learning to write shell scripts to detailed instructions for maintaining and backing up a network is included.

I found the book organized logically according to various services. The O'Reilly web site has a complete list of the contents, the index, and user reviews. O'Reilly also has an online fee-based service called MySafari (cool name) which allows subscribers the ability to build virtual bookshelves of O'Reilly books to have at their beck and call whenever they are online. It's free to explore and there's a 14-day demo period as well. You may see a lot for detail of this book by visiting their site.

With more than 50 chapters detailing nearly every nook and cranny of the most common Unix distributions, there's something here for every Unix power user. The updated and expanded sections on security and Windows access are welcome indeed. Every topic is explained with examples and illustrated richly with screen captures. Common problems, mistakes, and real-world examples are distributed liberally throughout the book. If any one book could help a Unix administrator, developer, or power user come to �grep' with the full capabilities of Unix, it would be this book.

Just a few high lights for me included the extensive section on the vi editor, detailing many functions I had no idea existed, such as running scripts within vi as shortcuts for oft-repeated commands. The section on eMacs got me excited about exploring that powerful editor to the extent that I downloaded one of the more extensive distributions for Mac OS X so I could try it out. For a Unix text editor, it is really a good one; however, coming from the Mac background I appreciate BBEdit more and more. Still, every Unix power user will find that some basic knowledge of vi or eMacs will come in very handy when they find themselves with console access and no local text editor other than these.

The closing chapters covering many security issues have captured my attention at this time, as I contemplate moving a few of my domains from a remote dedicated server to one directly under my control running Mac OS X. I think I understand a little better what my host providers have been doing for me all these years!

Make space near your workstation now for this book. If you are a mobile laptop user, like myself, consider becoming a user of MySafari services at O'Reilly, which would allow you to have a book like this available online when it is not convenient to carry the extra weight with you. Bottom line: no serious Unix user and no serious newcomer intending to become proficient in Unix should be without this book!

This versatile well-detailed book is friendly to beginners without compromising its advanced outlook. There is a new chapter on access to Unix from Windows. At over 1200 pages, it provided every vital information that any user would need: including expanded coverage on installation and other basic information on Tcl, Perl and Python. Security and Internet access were, as well, cordially handled. This Third Edition extended the sections of most of the new shells, including zsh and bash. It provided guidance on virtually all modern utilities and applications. It is a valuable reference for any Unix faithful.

This is one of the best technical book that I bought in the last 10 years, at least from the organizational and layout point of the view. It contains hundreds of short articles, page or two in length organized in a remarkable way of cross-referenced, alamanc-like book.

Articles are logically organized in chapters so you can read the book from cover to cover if you wish. However more likely you'll end up reading the book more randomly, following the cross-references. (I have some bad experience with the books organized in this way but this one is a clear exception.)

The book is written for beginners and experts alike, since I'm a Unix newbie I can only confirm that; I hate to say but the life of Unix SA would be much easier if the man pages would be organized in a similar way -- including examples that're almost never there.

I'm waiting for O'Reilly to update their "Unix CD Bookshelf" with third edition of this book because it's a little too heavy for carrying it with me.

My mid-level rating applies to the 2nd edition only, because the examples were printed in such light grey type that they are almost impossible for me to read. Since our local bookstores are not carrying the 3rd edition yet, I am wondering if it has the same problem.

This book has a lot of good system administration script examples. A must for any SA's bookshelf.

This is a useful book and contains a huge number of insightful nuggets of information presented in the format of short articles. I found references to things I had never even dreamed of existing in Unix. However, I find that the "nugget" approach is not as useful as a coordinated text would have been, because some things are covered several times, while other things are only mentioned in passing. This book would probably be most useful to a system administrator or user as an adjunct to another reference text. The typesetting could also have been improved, as there are some references in a very pale grey font which I find unnecessarily hard to read, expecially in dim light.

i dont want to use too many trite descriptions of this book (keeper, must have, great book), since i usually think they're written by plants, but honestly, it has served me well for the past 4 years.

when i bought it it was expensive--a college textbook price (i got it at a discount ;), but i've found it worth the $.

the book is organized in a really cool way--it is a large # of clearly written articles. i'm not sure where they were gathered. the articles would be hard to deal with on their own, but the INDEX is great--you look up what you are trying to do in the index, and often what you are looking for is there!

the one downside about this book is that it is a little outdated, like kelly felkins said, many tasks are straightforwardly done in perl, while this book is strictly unix utilities. also the internet (google) is a good search tool for any kind of problem you might have [if you can sort through the noise], so the book loses a bit of its value.

probably the biggest indicator of this being a useful book is that if you put it on your shelf, people will come to borrow it and frequently won't bring it back!

I continue to learn from this book. It has a really useful review of text and file processing, including a detailed description of 'find'. I like the way it is organized with lots of short sections with plenty references to other sections - sort of paper-based hyperlinking.
In my opinion, many of the tools described have been replaced in everyday use by perl commands, so a new version describing the equivalent perl commands would be useful.

This is a rare kind of book. It is not well suited for front to cover reading. But you will be reading it all the time.

Unix system contains hundreds of tools, commands that can perform an amazing amount of tasks. Each one of them can be tailored by using parameters to perform his concrete function in a different way each time, the one that best fits your needs.

Of course, nobody master them all, or all their parameters. Unix users read man pages when they need to search a forgotten parameter, or an unknown tool. After months and years of work, each Unix user has a personal way of using the tools provided. Not always the best.

That is the place of this book. Several knowledgeable writers offer their years of experience condensed in a few "tricks" for a specific task you may want to do. For example, finding a file. You have a brief description of some of the most useful parameters you can use (not all, man pages are for that). Then the book displays some examples on using them: finding files older than X days, finding big files...

This is an excellent book for experts and beginners alike. The first time Unix user will have a help for finding "how to do that" in Unix. The expert will find new and innivative ways to use the commands he thought he mastered.

As many reviewers have said already, this book will not teach you how to set a machine or configure a server, but it will help to improve your performance and your overall knowledge of the tools you use, and the tools you should be using.

This book is a true treasure chest, full of tips and tricks for Unix admins, users, enthusiasts. The CD ROM comes very handy too. Definetely worth the money.

This book has many scattered Tips on Unix from the user's point of view. It doesn't mention TCP/IP and protocols. You won't see Perl, here. Basically, it tells you how to write fine Bash scripts to take full advantage of Unix to solve mundane tasks, like changing your login prompt to display:date, time, hostname, etc. Setup terminal options. Very fine introduction to Regular Expressions (Regex). Nice tutorial on Awk. Fine chapter on Vi (not Vim). The chapter on How Bash interprets your commands will make you stop wondering why your ``*'' and variables ``$1'' are being misinterpreted. You must read it.

So, why not five stars? This book is old. No word about GNU/Linux, the most proeminent *nix outcome. The tools included in the CD-Rom duplicate some GNU utilities, now included in every distro. Some tips on formatting text using ``troff'' are hardly useful today (with X Window all around). BTW, no word about X Window.

Finally, if you're looking for Unix administration tips buy Nemeth (Unix administration). If you are looking for ``gotchas'' tips, that could save your time, this is THE book.

Every now and then I come back to it.

It is an excellent book full of short, how to, articles that are neatly organized and cross-referenced.

A "Bag of Tricks Reference Book" for Unix/Linux command line junkies who want to be more proficient at the command line, shells, processes, managing files, working a little with shell scripts and some basics on how and why Unix works the way it does.

It has more info about how to manage files than any other subject.

It is not for beginners. It will not teach you how to set up a server, workstation or network. It will not help you with security other than a little file security.

A better name would be, "Unix Command Line, Power Tools".

This book shows you how to exploit the power of UNIX. It is a compilation of tips and tricks. Some people may look down on tips and tricks, but you wouldn't be able to accomplish most of them with any other operating system. This is not a book you will read straight through, and you won't study it and entirely master it. I would recommend this to any UNIX system administrator, system programmer, script programmer, or anyone who is or aspires to be a UNIX guru.

People may tell you that THE reference on UNIX is the UNIX System Administration Handbook (known as the Purple book, formerly the red book) and they are right to a point. The Purple book relates to administering a UNIX system. What if you are not a UNIX system administrator, but a user who wants to move to the next level? Then this is the book, especially if you've already gotten bored with O'Reilly books on the Bash shell (there are other shells?) and Programming with GNU Software, and want to move to the next level. You know, you want to learn tricks, become more broad in your techniques, but you aren't an SysAdmin. This is probably the a book you want to include in an order for Learning Gnu Emacs (emacs vs. vi... please, emacs rules).

UNIX POWER TOOLS is really the best book on UNIX/LINUX. It's original, enjoyable, perfectly written (concise & sarcastic), intuitively and clearly organized, fastly accessible, critical about technologies, loaded with expertise and experience.

As a student then a computer scientist, I searched and read many and many books. This one truly stands up as the best designed, organized and written, not only for Unix/Linux but in all categories.

It has a unique, very original and practical layout: It's a book-magazine-almanac, meaning the reader doesn't have to read lond pages to get information (which requires attention & uses energy) nor follow the chapters. The access to information is the faster possible. It's so true a pleasure that I often read it again, only to be delighted. (The style is ironical and concise.)

On a technical standpoint, the organization is clear, with big "natural" topics, well structured, with a progressive approach. The useful knowledge is given immediately, and it's very easy to find an answer to any problem. Besides, it's an excellent tutorial/reference guide to the shell programming, sed, awk, and many others. Even the "theorical" aspects have a very pratical impact. For example, the part linked to the File System & the links explains clearly the concepts, but this helped to, for the first time, really understand the differences and therefore use the most appropriate solution.

It's important to know that the book is limited in scope (which is clearly indicated); however, at the difference of others that pretend to cover anything but only stay at the surface, this one really goes deep inside. In addition, even the elements that are not covered have a starting point, allowing the reader to find easily additional data.

However, some points are not here, like new interesting features of Bash 2.0, & others. Let's hope the 3rd version will add many more and extend the book's scope.

To conclude, if you have one & only one book to choose, UNIX POWER TOOLS is for you.

As another reviewer said, this isn't an "Intro to Unix" book. But if you have a Unix or Linux account, and have learned some basics but want to make the operating system really work for you, this is your book. That's how I started; I spent a month with this book, and emerged a power user, chaining commands and writing shell scripts to bend the operating system to my will. Until I read this book, I had no idea how much editing, filtering, searching, file and directory manipulation, automation and time saving I could achieve in Unix. I've been a fan of Unix ever since, and Unix Power Tools is still my first reference.

My only criticism of this book is that it covers so many topics that it can't treat many of them in any depth. If you want to know about sh, awk, grep, or sed, you can get an introduction here, but will need the man pages or other more specific books to learn more. But I still find about 90% of what I need to know about all of these things in Unix Power Tools.

I have the first edition, which now seems a bit dated, though still fundamentally sound. I don't know what changes have been made in the 2nd edition.

This book consists of page after page of UNIX tips and tricks -- mostly tricks.

The book is appropriate for someone who already knows UNIX and wants to learn some fancy ways to save keystrokes writing commands, make a fancy UNIX prompt, etc. In fact, Chapter 7 is devoted entirely to modifying your UNIX shell prompt. One example: have the prompt include the server name, and make the name flash on and off.

There is no way in the world this should be the first UNIX book anyone buys. Beginners will be lost as the authors skip from one tip to the next, in a haphazard fashion.

And it's not one of those books that provides overall coverage of a subject. A book of tricks is, without a doubt, not a book that could serve as your one and only UNIX book. There's simply too much left out. For example, check out the two chapters on shell scripting. They don't come close to providing coverage of most of the important things you need to know -- it's just a series of tips for people who already know shell scripting and want to learn some extras that are fancy or flashy or maybe save a few keystrokes.

The chief flaw of this book is how immature it seems. It devotes a couple of pages to explaining how to code something, and I'm left wondering why anyone would waste their time. It has the feeling of several 14 year old boys coming up with tricks and showing them to each other. Cool! Yeah, cool!

If you want to become one of those people who are very technical, but lack business sense, this is your book. Just be prepared when the senior VP says, "You wasted your time doing WHAT?!"

To be fair, this book is probably a good one for the system administrator who uses UNIX all day long and already has a firm grasp of the job. At that point, why not add a few extras? Go ahead, make the prompt blink.

Every time I buy an O'Reilly book I swear it will be the last. Same thing here. All kinds of hype and no delivery. I hate this book. I don't know why it gets so many good reviews. You might be able to use it as a reference book occasionally. Not well written at all.

This book is definitely full of dynamite stuff! If I had to buy just one book in Unix, this would be the one.

However, this book can be expanded to include recent developments which would make this a true bible. Disk management, memory management, and basic networking commands are required nowadays by every average unix programmer. This book can touch upon these in its next edition.

O'Reilley does it again folks.

A Good Big Book - but worth the hype?

The Unix Power Tools has already established a reputation of being a classic. The behemoth has no less that 1073 pages and goes accompanied by a CD with a lot of small shellscripts that are described in the book. The authors show a thorough understanding of the subject and are able to explain the ways of Unix in a casual talkative way. Much work is devoted to the layout and the text edition. For example, the crossreferences are well done, greyed out in readable italics. The publisher seems to understand the importance of easy readable text. Many of us know how a good book can be spoiled by hasty and bad editing, and it's a relief to see that O'Reilly takes this issue seriously. The text is divided into paragraphs of about 1/4 to 1 page in size. These paragraphs deal with the Unix commands, the shells, the history of unix or the included nifty shellscripts. One might think that the authors view Unix as a collection of structured trivia - a view I personally like. You won't read this book `cover to cover' (to use that awful cliche), but you'll start joyreading for that bit of advice or for that handy tool they've written. (For example: the thing that got me up the wall was that filenames can have empty spaces at the end, so it seems you cannot delete them. I should have known that one way earlier :^( ) Sometimes the authors write down some very casual paragraphs: a flame from usenet (Why NOT to use the C-shell for programming), the history of a command ( grep is: g from global, RE is regular expression, and the P stands for print, hence g/RE/P) or other fun to read items. It will not be the book you'll grab for serious studying or when the system goes down unexpectedly. The problems with big books are usually twofold and this one suffers rather badly from it. First of all it is written for the novice and expert alike - a concept that comes from a marketing and not from educational point of view. The authors repeat the man pages - did you know you can find files by name with the `find' command? And they go on for every Find option. The novice who didn't know about the find command will not try anything as fancy like to build a database with the filestructure in it in order to speed up his find command. Equally, experts won't like the basics explained. The second problem with big books is that lots of the presented material is not relevant to your need or situation. You haven't got the C-shell? Throw away a couple of pages. Don't like the chapter ` vi tips & tricks' , `Saving time at the commandline' or `creating custom commands in vi', then you can skip another 100 pages. Conclusion. Although lot's of information isn't relevant to your need, unix-implementation, shell or skill-level, this book is easy to read thanks to the good layout and small paragraphs. The authors truly have years of experience and have made many handy shellscripts. For those of you who want to like to master the commandline of Unix and like to skim for the golden hint, this book is a true find. But if you know what you want to learn then dedicated books present a better alternative to this somewhat unfocussed book.

If you have ever sat next to a Unix wizard watching them perform magical tricks and wondered how they did that, this book will give you all the insight you need to do it yourself. I have the O'Reilly Unix in a Nutshell and like it for help with syntax but that is about it. This book is a far better reference for what you can do with the commands.

The best part is that it is so easy to use. Almost everything is under one page and it uses a great cross-referencing format that keeps you from having to have one finger holding your place in the index all the time.

I think more computer books should use this format! It is a must have for anyone learning Unix!!!

Complete, neat, easy and extremely useful!

most people hate arcane unix commands, but in this book you'll be in love with these magic commands and learn to use them powerfully and creatively.

echo "Happy commadlining!"

I work in two places and couldn't live without it. Unix Power Tools is everything I want in a reference book. Concise explanations (most topics are a page or two at most), lots of clear, commented examples (which are replicated on the CD), a very broad coverage of topics and excellent organization, indexing and cross referencing. Almost every time I've needed to figure out how to do something in Unix this book has come through with flying colors.

What tool does this not cover? There are hundreds of little recipes in this book (examples are one of the best things a book can offer) and I am 2x more productive and happy since I picked this up. Highly recommended. If I were stranded on a deserted island with a Linux laptop...

I do not know about you, but for me, a book has to be pretty darn exceptional to persuade me to buy a second edition of a book which I already own the first. Unix Power Tools is one such book. It is simply packed with tons of useful tips which the authors have accumulated over decades of using Unix, and is a sort of `cr�me de la cr�me' of O'Reilly reference books.

Praise aside, the book is not for everyone. It is an intermediate level reference, not an introductory tutorial. If your problems are like "How do I delete a file?", you should read something else first, get acquainted with Unix, and then return to it. If, however, the questions you face are more like "How do I delete a file with a null name?", then this is exactly the book for you. Unless there is a real Unix wizard around you, this book is likely to earn you this title in your environment.

The second edition focuses on POSIX systems rather than on SysV/BSD, uses Bash and Tcsh instead of Sh, Ksh and Csh, and has moved from Awk to Perl. The two-colour printing is gone, though. Fortunately, the superb index - one of the best I have seen - is still here, and so are the cross-references in the text. Accompanying CD-ROM might be essential if you are living in the mountains of Tajikistan, but anybody connected to the Internet will probably prefer to download newer versions of software on-line.

I have found the answer to so many problems in this book, it's amazing. Conceptually, this book takes you lots of place (I love the references to more complete information whenever they refer to a command) and it can keep you moving around for hours but the thing I've found most handy are some of the command line and script examples. I've had several problems to solve in a script and the book gave great examples that through a little tweaking and testing, solved the problem in lots less lines of code than I'd anticipated. Essential for a Unix Sys. Admin!

It's very annoying to carry around a 1000+ page book when there's only 50 or so pages that are really helpful. This book, however, is full of information. You know, the kind of info that says, "There are five ways to do this; let me give you all five then tell you why method number 3 is the best, based on my experience." What compliments this is the fact that just about everything is cross-referenced. Some authors try mention things without explaining them at all. Some mention things then explain them later, which is a little better. Some authors make a valiant attempt to not introduce you to a new concept without explaining it right then and there. This book, however, is different in that it cross-references everything. If a buzz-word is mentioned (pretty much any Unix term) a reference is made as to where it can be found. That's so awesome! It's annoying to say, "I know I saw this topic in this 1000+ page book before, I just can't remember where." All books this large should follow this format.

Overall, there is tons, TONS of info (just look at the table of contents), the topics are not glossed over, the authors do a good job of doing more than simply telling you syntax and the info is easy to find.

Of course, nothing's perfect. The authors should throw in a chapter on NFS and reconfiguring the kernel. I guess they figured that that was something for Unix admins. I guarantee, however, that you'll have to hide this book if you get it!

This is easily the largest O'Reilly book I have seen, but it's worth it. It's chock full of 45 chapters devoted to nearly all topics in the Unix world. It's helpful for a wide range of skill levels. My only problem with it is that it's a bit out of date (1997), but as Unix draws on a 30 year tradition, most of the tips and tricks work as advertised on the latest Linux distros.

I bought the first edition of this book way back when it first came out, and it's still by far one of the most useful books in my library. I find myself referring back to it any time i have to write a quick shell script. It's a big fat book that contains no end of useful tidbits and information. I'm not sure what's changed in the second edition, but it's one of those must-have items for any library.

A friend of mine recommended this book for me a couple of years ago and it took me a while to find it in the book stores. After finding and reading it I was absolutely amazed! Very full of information and tips, easy to understand and written with humor as well.

I have about a dozen of those Post-It flags in my book to mark the several sections that I am currently reading. The design and cross-referencing is excellent! I have yet to see a book as well-constructed as this one.