sed & awk (Nutshell Handbooks) 2nd edition by Dougherty, Dale, Robbins, Arnold (1997) Paperback Paperback – March 8, 1996

First of all, let me just say that I am a pretty tough critic, and that the quality of technical paperbacks typically tends to disappoint me. I was pleasantly surprised by this text from O'Riley. Not only does it contain the sort of technical details that one normally wouldn't expect from a product offered by someone of the .... Erm... Irish persuasion, but so too, I found that in terms of overall quality this book stands at the head of the pack.I would have to say that the first pleasant surprise occurred after an abortive attempt to swat my wife's cat off of an end table. Not only did the book easily withstand the force with which I hurled it, but in a fine stroke of luck, the book cleanly swept both my wife's cat and her hideous 'heirloom ceramic angels' (frankly garbage, if you ask me) into a narrow crevasse between the table and the wall. Let me tell you, that cat is far easier to tolerate now that it is permanently wedged into the corner, and I have the high-quality craftsmanship of O'Riley to thank.

Fast shipping, great condition.

I make my living as a computer techie and this is simply a replacement for a worn-out copy of the first edition which I've been using for what feels like millenia.IMHO (OK, I know the authors and I'm biased) this is the definitive book on Awk, and it's one of the best books on sed, so if you're on a Unix/Linux/Solaris/HP-UX/Aix or other member of the "unice" family, I'd definitely recommend it.

I use these tools a LOT, and this is the best combined reference out there.The nice thing about "sed & awk" is that your copy can be 20 years old, and everything still works fine.

Helped me learn sed and awk on my own, a great jump start and good reference handbook.A more modern version would probably include a CD with bunch of lessons ideas to get one started.

Great reference if you work in sed and awk regularly, or if you are adding them to your workflow. This has solid examples that the man pages just dont have the depth to include, but are super useful in real world scenarios.

I bought a used copy, which turned out to have been printed in 1992. Operating system references are to UNIX, as Linux was a virtually-unknown infant at the time; references to various software utilities is similarly dated. The 2nd edition might be somewhat better; it's listed as a 1997 edition, so it may actually be aware of Linux. Even so, I would be skeptical of spending the dough on a pig in a poke.Dated material aside, I found the book difficult to use, even though I've been learning programming languages since 1982 -- including that early, primitive BASIC, 8086 assembly, Pascal, C, C++, Perl, HTML, Java, VB, and others. The flow of its materials presentation doesn't seem to build naturally from ground zero. Perhaps if I'd learned programming on a UNIX machine, the references in this book would be clearer.So, heads up if you're looking to learn sed and awk. This book can probably be of some help (especially if you're a UNIX geek), but you may well need to augment it with a lot of on-line or other research.

exactly what I needed (despite the age) but I wonder if the seller actually looks at their products.Besides a few pencil marks there was several postit notes in the books with scribbles of this and that.You would think that these would av been removed.

Wer UNIX, Linux oder jedes andere unixoide System aus dieser Reihe nutzt und richtig auskosten will, benötigt auch den Blick für die kleinen aber leistungsfähigen Tools für den Computer.Selbst mit einfachsten Mitteln kann man Daten extrahieren und verwalten, ohne gleich einen xxSQL-Server aufzusetzen und PHP mit HTML im Browser zu überfrachten.EIn echtes Kleinod für Systemnutzer, die auch ohne Maus an die Infos kommen möchten, die Megabyte-große Dateien liefern. Meist schon in der Vergessenheit der großen Schar der User geraten, erfreue ich mich als Old-School-Programmierer an solchen Werkzeugen, die den Charme und die Funktionalität eines 5-teiligen Schweizer Taschenmessers versprühen. Wie Saint-Ex schon bemerkte: Perfektion ist nicht dann erreicht, wenn es nichts mehr hinzuzufügen gibt, sondern wenn man nichts mehr weglassen kann. In diesem Sinn...