

Unix for poets - agconway
http://people.sslmit.unibo.it/~baroni/compling04/UnixforPoets.pdf

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ihodes
I've been using *nix for a while, but there are things in here I haven't used
(tr, for example, and I haven't used much awk). A nice little diversion, and
it's something I'd feel comfortable showing to a newbie if I were nearby to
help out.

Definitely worth going through, yourself, if you've got some spare time and
want to use a little more of your shell.

NB: Don't pull up man pages right away (like I did for tr); the author
explains things after using them. Which works out pretty well.

EDIT1: Additionally, it's fun to rewrite some of these using tools I use more
regularly. E.g. replace the first uses of tr with grep. I prefer tr, now,
though; it makes more sense to "translate" non letter chars to newlines than
to just print all occurrences of a n-letter match.

------
crasshopper
Some updates to the text:

* tail +2 XXXX needs to be tail -n +2 XXXX.

* The $$'s in the shell script are problematic. ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78493/what-does-mean-in-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78493/what-does-mean-in-the-bash-shell))

* Do yourself a favour and alias a 'del' command instead of 'rm'. At least del should alias to rm -i. I use 'alias del gvfs-trash' which is like Windows' Recycle Bin.

It's interesting, this link has been posted to HN three other times and
received only 1 point each time.

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forkandwait
That's a fun article, but I think it would be better titled "Finally, a use
for poetry, told from a Unix geek's perspective".

~~~
yolesaber
I find it sad that people feel the need to establish arbitrary demarcation
lines between the arts and sciences. Poetry may not be "useful" in the sense
of creating utilities and infrastructure, but it is definitely used by many
people, myself included, as a creative medium to get emotions and thoughts
ordered in a way impossible with programming. Nothing soothes me more than to
read a poem to my friend or lover, and then have them reciprocate. Art is a
powerful thing.

I, for one, dread the day when poetry is considered "useless."

