Ask HN: Please recommend me ebooks on Regex and Linux | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Please recommend me ebooks on Regex and Linux

7 pointsesquivalience8 comments

Hi HN,

Can you recommend ebooks to read to introduce me to Regex and/or Linux?

I'm currently paging though The Linux Commands Handbook by Flavio Copes which I'm finding good! But I don't want just one resource.

I've been a windows user for a long time but have recently been fairly frustrated with it. Things like ads injected into system menus, and the absurd double-layer of settings configurations, are turning me off it, so I've decided to give Linux a try. I've opted for Kubuntu, for a small-step-first introduction and I'm very impressed with how smooth it is.

In fact I'm pretty sure I could just use it casually barely noticing it wasn't windows based - an amazing thing when comparing a community project to the mainstay product of one of the world's largest corps.

But that's not my aim. I'd prefer to understand the OS a bit more deeply than a casual user. I want to be able to mess around without messing up, it at least to have a shot at knowing what went wrong. I want to be able to use the terminal, not just gui operations. And I want to use some of the power it offers.

It'd be helpful to sketch out my level of knowledge but that is actually quite a difficult thing to do. I'm not a developer, have only very basic coding experience, and some more recent very badic scripting experience. I work in an office in a non-technical profession but often use Powershell and cmd in Windows for basic operations. I'm not afraid of reading in plaintext or reading Man before using a command. I know what a piped output is but I've never used regular expressions.

Thanks for any tips.

I always recommend people to jump in the deep end. If you want to learn something, use it. And use it exclusively.

Get yourself an independent system, preferably a separate computer with only Linux. Or maybe squeeze 20-50 gig from one your Windows partitions and put Linux on that as a dual-boot system if you can't find a spare computer lying around.

Set yourself a workable period, say two months. Mark the calendar.

Now, no cheating, but boot up nothing but Linux* until that two months (or whatever time you have set yourself) is over. You will not permit yourself to use Windows for anything at all during that time. You need that time to 'unlearn' the Windows-Way. And you will do everything on that Linux machine whether that be sys-adminning, surfing the Web, or programming.

You are going to strike roadblocks that you know, from years back, how to fix in Windows. Your challenge now is to work around that roadblock using Linux only. Google is your friend. You will learn to get around that roadblock, and get some knowledge under your belt. Rinse, repeat.

If you want to learn regex, use your new-found Linux knowledge to write bash scripts to automate your daily tasks. (Practise using 'sed', 'awk' and 'grep')

* Obviously, if you have to use Windows at your day-job, I am not talking about using "Linux only" there.

Jeffrey E.F. Friedl - Mastering Regular Expressions

Good one if you asked me.

I did! And thank you

For Linux get one of those thick Linux bibles and read through it, digest what you can, note what you can't, bookmark parts that pique your interest. Doing this, I got a much better understanding of what Linux is about and capable of, also when I need to know more I have a better idea of what to look for.

Sign up for GPT-4 ($20/mo). Seriously. It will be the best Linux teacher you can hope for.

How linux works:https://nostarch.com/howlinuxworks3

I understood regular expressions by learning DFAs https://youtu.be/UNn_dirK-nI

Bookmarked for a later watch. Appreciate the lead, thank you.

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