What You Should Already Know

You should already know the following things:

  • How to log in to your Unix system

  • How to run programs at the command line

  • How to make simple pipelines of commands and use simple I/O redirectors, such as < and >

  • How to put jobs in the background with &

  • How to create and edit files

  • How to make scripts executable, using chmod

Furthermore, if you're trying to work the examples here by typing commands at your terminal (or, more likely, terminal emulator) we recommend the use of a POSIX-compliant shell such as a recent version of ksh93, or the current version of bash. In particular, /bin/sh on commercial Unix systems may not be fully POSIX-compliant.

Chapter 14 provides Internet download URLs for ksh93, bash, and zsh.

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