How to Do Things the UNIX Way
In the following chapters of this book, we will learn many different UNIX commands. In teaching these commands to beginners, I find that it helps if you understand three general principles that apply to all UNIX commands. The following sections cover these three principles.
No News Is Good News
Because the output of one command is often piped as input to another UNIX command, commands do not output unnecessary messages. If a command is successful, it just goes back to the shell prompt without any other output. Don’t expect a completion message or a status message. On the other hand, if any output is generated, this is cause for alarm. Study this output carefully because it could be an indication that something went ...
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