Questions tagged [unix-philosophy]
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Is there any command line tool for purchasing anything online?
I continue to pursue ways to do everything from the command line and while it does not seem common whatsoever I am curious if there is one single example of a command line tool that allowed someone to ...
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coreutils ls summary
Why is there no summary option in coreutils ls command, like MS-DOS/Windows has?
With summary option I mean:
count the files and dirs and sum up their sizes.
Update:
It should read: "Even DOS/...
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What is the practical purpose of "./" in front of relative file paths (in the output from "find")?
Why are some relative file paths displayed in the form of ./file, instead of just file? For example, when I do:
find .
I get this output:
./file1
./file2
./file3
What is the practical purpose, other ...
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Is "running a folder" possible in Linux?
Is there a philosophy behind running a folder as an executable in linux?
user@node main % ls -lash ./bin
total 0
0 drwxrwxrwx 2 user staff 64B May 23 21:04 .
0 drwxr-xr-x 6 user staff 192B ...
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When filtering, never throw away information you don't need to
In this text, the author says
When filtering, never throw away information you don't need to
What does it mean in the context of applying UNIX philosophy?
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What's the Unix way of handling split-tunnels
I want to be able to control in my servers which programs are connected to the regular internet and the ones which are only able to communicate through a VPN, in the most minimal, versatile and secure ...
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Printing to the STDOUT vs writing to an output file directly [closed]
Is there any rule of thumb when the result of the program should be printed to the stdout by default, and when the more appropriate approach is to accept output file as one of the arguments and write ...
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The UNIX Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike [duplicate]
I have recently started reading "The UNIX Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike. My objective is to learn about the UNIX philosophy. My question is, Do I need to install UNIX on my ...
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Reading from dev/urandom - system behaviour
When reading from dev/urandom, with say head or dd, it’s of course expected that the output is always random and different.
How is this handled by UNIX at a low level? Is the file naturally truncated ...
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Why do FOSS developers claim cross-platform support when their stuff is frequently broken on Windows in frustrating ways? [closed]
Two examples out of thousands I've countered:
Bitcoin Core on Windows has a very annoying glitch which causes a cmd.exe (or similar) window to briefly appear and immediately go away, showing only for ...
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File ownership preservation with .tgz
Back with another probably very very basic UNIX question.
I understand the premise of Tape Archive Zips (.tgz) is that they preserve uid, gid, permissions...
However, it seems that this isn't portable....
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What requirements must a computer program meet to be considered as part to the unix toolkit?
It is stated here that:
The Unix operating system introduced the idea of a toolkit. That is, rather than having a few generalized and complex utilities programs, the system contains a toolkit of ...
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66
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Why do Unix-like OS incremental & consolidating backup systems focus so much on filesystem backup as opposed to device backup?
This question is a bit of a cross-platform one in the sense that it's probably best answered by people with extensive knowledge of both Windows and Unix-like OSes.
I run a mixed environment (Windows,...
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Do Unix Interface Naming Rules Exist? [duplicate]
I realized, that on Unix - systems a lot of weird interface acronyms exist:
lo = loopback interface
eno = ethernet interface, network interface card
ens = ethernet interface, on newer Ubuntu ...
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Grep data in specific pattern
MY File:
"DocumentCreationDate="2019-07-15T23:56:31" SampleID="1" entClassID="65535" ClientID="0" CardID="11209797""
Want to grep Pattern :
CardID="11209797"
The number may be different between "...
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Are permissions like "---r-xr-x" useful?
Would a file permission tuple of "---r-xr-x", or something else without owner usability yet still with group/other usability ever be useful in the real world? I would love to see some use cases!
...
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Do other Unix-like kernels have stable syscall ABIs?
Linux has a stable syscall ABI, but NT doesn't, Windows just ensure Win32 ABI is stable, which will not trap into kernel space immediately. Lower level functions of Windows like nt.dll might change ...
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Why has there been so little innovation with autoconf configure scripts in the Unix and Linux ecosystem? [closed]
A great deal of time is lost at the time of ./configure; especially when dependencies are missing and the subsequent calling thereof.
I've read many topics on this subject citing that caching the ...
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3
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Why is Unix 'self-supporting'?
I was reading Ritchie and Thompson's paper about the Unix file system. They write, 'It is worth noting that the system is totally self-supporting'. Were the systems before Unix not self-supporting? In ...
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is there a Base64-based dist?
Is there a Linux distribution or Unix version where everything is Base64 encoded in memory? I'm interested in the concept of being able to dump the entire system state and print it as a book.
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Is UNIX System V's source still available?
I was wondering if the AT&T system V's source code still available.
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Why is the primary admin UID 501?
I understand* the primary admin user is given a user ID of 501 and subsequent users get incremental numbers (502, 503, …). But why 501? What’s special about 50x, what’s the historical/technical reason ...
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How should Linux have been designed, if differently? [closed]
If Linus Torvalds could have designed Linux differently, what should he had done differently?
I use and like Linux. I'm happy that Linux is so established and works so well. It's still somewhat a ...
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How could one determine UID/GID of running process
Is there any way to retrieve UID/GID of running process?
Currently, I know only way of looking it up in htop. But I don't want to depend on third-party tool, prefer to use builtin unix commands.
...
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Where should daemon status files go in the *nix hierarchy?
This is kind of a canonical question about the Unix/Linux filesystem.
I am working on a little daemon that generates output like this every five minutes:
Data1: 100
Data2: 201
Data3: 102
This data ...
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Why a "login" shell over a "non-login" shell?
I have a basic understanding of dotfiles in *nix system. But I am still quite confused about this Difference between Login Shell and Non-Login Shell?
A bunch of different answers (including multiple ...
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141
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Get the time sequence in Unix?
Actually I expect the output like
from current timestamp to 10s+current timestamp
ex:
11:49:01
11:49:02
11:49:03
.....
11:49:10
But this output must be coming in banner output.
Hint:
I am able ...
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2
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717
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Should I output program's name when warning or error occurs?
If I'm writing a script or a program, should I output to stderr its name together with warning or error message? For example:
./script.sh: Warning! Variable "var" lowered down to 10.
or:
./prog.py: ...
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Why can't unix be object oriented or at least organized [closed]
Why can't things in unix be represented as objects? For example, files are sort of objects, but they are all just files. I realize that this can be useful for providing a standard interface, but ...
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Is using threads still considered an anti-pattern? [closed]
Background
In The Art of Unix Programming, Eric S. Raymond dismisses multithreaded programming as a performance hack that should be avoided. According to him, the biggest problem with threads is that ...
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Unix, Mac OS and Linux? [closed]
I am working to learn more about unix and linux for a project. I noticed that Unix is the parent system of Mac OS and also of linux.
Are the two similar in scope of C based programming? And how ...
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What's the philosophy behind delaying writing data to disk?
In Linux, a finished execution of a command such as cp or dd doesn't mean that the data has been written to the device. One has to, for example, call sync, or invoke the "Safely Remove" or "Eject" ...
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Dependency hell: Why not create portable applications [closed]
Back in time to the ages when I was using Windows, applications were installed in an independent way. This left a lot of freedom to the end user/sysadmin to decide what and where to upgrade, what to ...
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Why should you avoid "stringently columnar" input formats?
Doug McIlroy, the inventor of Unix pipes and one of the founders of the Unix tradition, had this to say at the time [McIlroy78]:
(ii) Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, ...
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What are the commands which will work in unix but won't work in linux [closed]
Pls list the command or the scenario which will work in Unix but will never work in Linux
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Why is Linux "Unix-like" if its kernel is monolithic?
As I understand it, part of the Unix identity is that it has a microkernel delegating work to highly modular file processes. So why is Linux still considered "Unix-Like" if it strays from this ...
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Has Unix been used by accountants and other non-programmers at AT&T in the 70s and 80s?
In the short documentary, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie Explain UNIX (Bell Labs) it is mentioned, that Unix is not only an OS, but also
a system around which a community could form.
I find this ...
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Are Unix Internet sockets files?
I understand that "Everything is a file" is one of the major concepts of Unix, but sockets use different APIs that are provided by the kernel (like socket, sendto, recv, etc.), not like normal file ...
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Is it correct to use certain special characters when naming filenames in Linux?
Is it correct to use certain special characters, as +, &, ', . (dot) and , (comma), basically, in filenames.
I understand that you can use - and _ with no problem, but doing some research I have ...
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Why does MV(1) copy objects if permission to move denied?
Does mv act as cp(1) if permission for process to move denied?
If so, isn't it against the rule do one thing and do it well?
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What does Unix programming mean, exactly? [closed]
I thought I understood what the term Unix programming meant, but now, after reading about it in a kernel/C programming context, I feel like I need to clarify the meaning of this term.
It is not clear ...
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A layman's explanation for "Everything is a file" — what differs from Windows?
I know that "Everything is a file" means that even devices have their filename and path in Unix and Unix-like systems, and that this allows for common tools to be used on a variety of resources ...
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Mac OSX vs Linux Unix-ness [closed]
So I know that Linux is considered "Unix-like" while OSX is Unix.
Why is this? I feel like Linux is much more "Unix-like" than OSX is.
What makes OSX more "Unix" than Linux?
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Why is sort -o useful?
UNIX philosophy says: do one thing and do it well. Make programs that handle text, because that is a universal interface.
The sort command, at least GNU sort, has an -o option to output to a file ...
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What makes an operating system "Unix-Like"?
I frequently come across the term "unix-like" on many web sites.
There is no standard; it is just in the way it behaves.
But if I were to develop a kernel from scratch, what would make it considered ...
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Has the Unix Philosophy been abandoned in web application design? [closed]
The Unix Philosophy encourages the use of small, generically reusable cooperating programs that collaborate with forms of inter-process communication like pipes, fifos, sockets, as opposed to shared ...
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Correct handling of Python2 and Python3
What is the correct way running scripts that depend on python2.x but on a system where python3.x is aliased with python.
The solution should take into account the following things :
Python2 should ...
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Unix and Linux without a file system?
I was reading Eric Raymond's the Art of Unix Programming, (Amazon and online) and at the very beginning of the book where he analyses what Unix does wrong he says:
Having a file system at all may ...
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Why index files? [closed]
I installed Linux on something like 3 or 4 different machines last year, and in two cases, I had a serious urge to vomit after noting that file indexers such as virtuoso (Debian testing with the ...
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