Chapter 88. The Unix Tools Are Your Friends
IF, ON MY WAY TO EXILE ON A DESERT ISLAND, I had to choose between an IDE and the Unix toolchest, Iâd pick the Unix tools without a second thought. Here are the reasons why you should become proficient with Unix tools.
First, IDEs target specific languages, while Unix tools can work with anything that appears in textual form. In todayâs development environment, where new languages and notations spring up every year, learning to work in the Unix way is an investment that will pay off time and again.
Furthermore, while IDEs offer just the commands their developers conceived, with Unix tools you can perform any task you can imagine. Think of them as (classic pre-Bionicle) Lego blocks: you create your own commands simply by combining the small but versatile Unix tools. For instance, the following sequence is a text-based implementation of Cunninghamâs signature analysisâa sequence of each fileâs semicolons, braces, and quotes, which can reveal a lot about the fileâs contents:
for i in *.java; do echo -n "$i: " sed 's/[^"{};]//g' $i | tr -d '\n' echo done
In addition, each IDE operation you learn is specific to that given taskâfor instance, adding a new step in a projectâs debug build configuration. By contrast, sharpening your Unix tool skills makes you more effective at any task. As an example, Iâve employed ...
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