Top 10 command line tools for programmers to master
Short version (please read the long one :)
Please list your subjective list of the 10 most important *nix command line tools a programmer should know more than superficially. Also, your are more than welcome to list good sources of learning these tools (besides man pages), be it books or tutorials online etc.
Long version:
Everyday, I see send programmers use tools such as cvs, make, diff, patch, find, cut, grep, regular expressions, general bash scripting, awk, sed, etc. to get their jobs done faster. I always admire people who know how to use these tools fast and effeciently, instead of having to do something similar in a slower and more error-prone fashion.
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:54:22 GMT, Aragorn staggered into the Black Sun and said: Not for VCDs, it doesn't. VCDs are different from regular CDs in several ways. VCDs...
I know (of) most of these unix (or rather GNU as it is) command line (Linux, Solaris, Cygwin)). But I use most of them in only the simplest ways.
That is, I use cvs for importing, checking out, committing and such basic tasks. I never branch, merge, tag, diff to make an entire patch for a branch, or anything like that. If I have to do something like that, I do it by hand.
I make only the most basic of Makefiles, I use none of the smarter features of (GNU) make that could undoubtedly help me.
I use only diff for spotting differences, and then correcting them by hand. I never patch.
I use find mostly like: find . grep -i "something", because I don't know of all the smart features of find (well, I do actually know -name, and once in a while, I do use the extremely useful exec option, but only after checking the man page).
My knowledge of regular expressions (grep style or otherwise) is pretty superficial.
In any kind of communication and language, even in computer programming. We can see a difference between total spaghetti and celtic knot work. But...
And so on...
Even though an "advanced" solution, using an "advanced" feature of some "advanced" command line tool, is not always needed to solve a problem, I would like to get better at using these and other tools!
So, please list your subjective list of the 10 most important command line tools a programmer should know more than superficially. Also, your are more than welcome to list good sources of learning these tools (besides man pages), be it books or tutorials online etc.
Thanks in advance! I think this thread could be a good starting point for many programmers wanting to use better tools :)
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