Unix for poets | Hacker News Reader

Unix for poets

people.sslmit.unibo.it

50 pointsagconway4 comments

I've been using *nix for a while, but there are things in here I haven't used (tr, for example, and I haven't used much awk). A nice little diversion, and it's something I'd feel comfortable showing to a newbie if I were nearby to help out.

Definitely worth going through, yourself, if you've got some spare time and want to use a little more of your shell.

NB: Don't pull up man pages right away (like I did for tr); the author explains things after using them. Which works out pretty well.

EDIT1: Additionally, it's fun to rewrite some of these using tools I use more regularly. E.g. replace the first uses of tr with grep. I prefer tr, now, though; it makes more sense to "translate" non letter chars to newlines than to just print all occurrences of a n-letter match.

Some updates to the text:

* tail +2 XXXX needs to be tail -n +2 XXXX.

* The $$'s in the shell script are problematic. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78493/what-does-mean-in-t...)

* Do yourself a favour and alias a 'del' command instead of 'rm'. At least del should alias to rm -i. I use 'alias del gvfs-trash' which is like Windows' Recycle Bin.

It's interesting, this link has been posted to HN three other times and received only 1 point each time.

That's a fun article, but I think it would be better titled "Finally, a use for poetry, told from a Unix geek's perspective".

I find it sad that people feel the need to establish arbitrary demarcation lines between the arts and sciences. Poetry may not be "useful" in the sense of creating utilities and infrastructure, but it is definitely used by many people, myself included, as a creative medium to get emotions and thoughts ordered in a way impossible with programming. Nothing soothes me more than to read a poem to my friend or lover, and then have them reciprocate. Art is a powerful thing.

I, for one, dread the day when poetry is considered "useless."

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