

The Art of Unix Programming - geoka9
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/

======
danieldk
I bought this book years ago, and the title is misleading. It is not so much a
programming, as ESR's personal interpretation of UNIX culture and values.

If you like ESR, you will probably love it. If not, it will read like
unstructured drivel.

Maybe, I am too negative. But if you are a non-UNIX programmer, and have to
work on a UNIX project, there are far better books available. (E.g. Advanced
Programming in the UNIX Environment, by W. Richard Stevens and Stephen Rago)

~~~
djacobs
To be fair, the subject of the title is "Art" and the object is "Programming".
This is about the art and care that developers should put into the Unix
community and the tools they build. In a way, it's an intro to the mindset and
philosophy of openness in technology.

------
codex
Does anyone else find ESR's writings to be haughty and a bit sophomoric? He
may be brilliant, but every time I pick up this book I get turned off almost
immediately.

~~~
angrycoder
I find his stuff to be infectiously enthusiastic and inspiring.

------
beilabs
Besides using wget to rip the entire thing is there a tar.gz or zip handy with
everything in it? Flying soon and would like some offline reading material...

~~~
erikano
> _This book and its on-line version are distributed under the terms of the
> Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 1.0_

So I think it is OK to post this PDF version.

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.103...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.103.2799&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

~~~
beilabs
Thanks very much....I really need to get a tablet just for these types of
books...

~~~
erikano
Just make sure that you don't get one that is too small - I borrowed an iRex
iLiad [1] from the library at the university, and I found that the 8.1-inch
(21 cm) display meant constant "scrolling" with the touch-pen, which was
rather annoying due to the high response-time of the system.

The only book that I finished reading on it, was _Mercurial: The Definitive
Guide_ by Bryan O'Sullivan [2]. The reason that I could read this book, was
that it was released for free online by the author with all source files so
that I could compile it in a smaller page-format with bigger fonts (the
figures did not scale automatically, but IMHO, they weren't crucial to
understanding the content of the book).

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILiad>

[2]: <http://hgbook.red-bean.com/>

------
Naga
I found this book at my university's library, and ended up spending most of
the day reading it there. I liked it, and didn't know it was online, too.

------
rottencupcakes
The entire faq is very very long. Here's a tl;dr high level list of rules and
philosophies: <http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html>

~~~
kiba
It's not a FAQ but a book!

------
uriel
This contains some good bits, but "The Unix Programming Environment" by Rob
Pike and Brian Kernighan is a much more eloquent and concise explanation of
the essence of the Unix philosophy.

