Sandra Henry-Stocker
Unix Dweeb
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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 30 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She lives in the mountains in Virginia where, when not working with or writing about Unix, she's chasing the bears away from her bird feeders.
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Sandra Henry-Stocker and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications, Inc., its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.
Sorting, joining, shuffling, skipping and numbering lines on Linux
Linux provides a lot of handy commands for manipulating text files. This post explains how to use a collection of them.
Using the comm command to compare files or directories on Linux
The Linux comm command makes it easy to compare a couple text files and determine if they both contain the same lines -- whether the file contents are sorted or not.
Incrementing and decrementing numeric variables in bash
There are quite a few ways to increment and decrement numeric variables in bash. This post examines the many ways you can do this.
Navigating your way around the Linux file system
With a handful of commands and a trick or two, you can move around the Linux file system with ease and never get lost.
There's more to more than meets the eye
The more command on Linux may have a lot more options than you know and use.
Hiding from history on Linux
The history command on Linux can be used to display and rerun commands that you've used, and it can also help you hide commands that you don't want remembered.
Pipes and more pipes on Linux
Linux systems support pipes that enable passing output from one command to another, but they also support 'named pipes,' which are quite different.
Moving tasks from foreground to background and back again
Moving a command or script that you're running on the command line to the background so that you can start another job and managing backgrounded processes requires only a handful of commands.
Assigning sudo privilege to users on Linux
Assigning sudo privileges to users allows them to help manage the system by running commands that they would not otherwise be allowed to use.
How to determine your Linux system’s filesystem types
Linux provides quite a few commands to look into file system types. Here's a look at the various file system types used by Linux systems and the commands that will identify them.
The power of >, >>, &, &&, and || on Linux
The >, >>, &, && and || characters are extremely useful whenever you're working on the Linux command line.