Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide by Daniel J. Barrett

by Daniel J. Barrett

Unlock the secrets of the Terminal and discover how this powerful tool solves problems the Finder can't handle. With this handy guide, you'll learn commands for a variety of tasks, such as killing programs that refuse to quit, renaming a large batch of files in seconds, or running jobs in the background while you do other work.

Get started with an easy-to-understand overview of the Terminal and its partner, the shell. Then dive into commands neatly arranged into two dozen categories, including directory operations, file comparisons, and network connections. Each command includes a concise description of its purpose and features.Log into your Mac from remote locationsSearch and modify files in powerful waysSchedule jobs for particular days and timesLet several people use one Mac at the same timeCompress and uncompress files in a variety of formatsView and manipulate Mac OS X processesCombine multiple commands to perform complex operationsDownload and install additional commands from the Internet

Genres: Technology, Computers, Technical

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Daniel J. Barrett, Ph.D., has been teaching and writing about Linux, the internet, and related technologies for more than 30 years. Dan has also been a software engineer, heavy metal singer, system administrator, university lecturer, birthday party magician, and humorist.

Note: If you are looking for "Daniel J. Barrett" the mystery writer, visit https://www.goodreads.com/author/show....

Reviews

[Jeff Sibley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looks like a good small reference. was able to figure out how to do what I was trying to...

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Tem­inal Pocket Guide by DJ Bar­rett is a short (well 230 pages — it could be far longer of course), con­cise quick ref­er­ence to ter­minal com­mands on OSX. It is to date to ref­er­ence OSX 10.7 Lion and bears the hall­marks of O’Reilly’s Pocket Guide series. I was sur­prised that there was no prior ver­sion of this very valu­able guide. It is a handy, use­ful volume that provides a brief sketch of the gen­eral oper­a­tion of a par­tic­u­lar object, in this case the Ter­minal applic­a­tion in OSX, focus­sing on the most com­mon and widely used pro­cesses. I have the eBook ver­sion on my Kindle which does fit in my pocket, but as I men­tioned it might take a slightly lar­ger pocket for the paper-based ver­sion at 230 pages. True to form this volume sticks to this proven prac­tice of being com­pre­hens­ive without being exhaust­ive. It is tar­geted at users from novice to advanced, but is really dir­ec­ted towards ensur­ing that an abso­lutely begin­ner will have all the con­text neces­sary to feel com­fort­able with the Ter­minal applic­a­tion and how it can be imme­di­ately util­ized to make life on OSX sim­pler.The struc­ture of this Pocket Guide is logical and fol­lows a path of use­ful top­ics rather than increas­ingly com­plex­ity. The final few short sec­tions deal with tasks such as work­ing with a pack­age man­ager or work­ing with shell scripts that are very ter­minal spe­cific and would be new ter­rit­ory for those unfa­mil­iar with ter­minal. Oth­er­wise, the bulk of the book deals with vari­ous file manip­u­la­tion tasks and sys­tem tasks that can be accom­plished using other GUI tools, but as the author states, can be used with far more power through ter­minal. The premise of the book really revolves around mak­ing life sim­pler and accom­plish­ing tasks faster and with greater efficiency.

One aspect of the author’s approach that I was par­tic­u­larly focus of was draw­ing dir­ect ref­er­ence between how the GUI tools accom­plished a task and how this is accom­plished in Ter­minal. I think this helps the reader appre­ci­ate the con­nec­tion and feel far more com­fort­able with how Ter­minal can be integ­rated into exist­ing prac­tice as opposed to be seen as a dif­fer­ent tool for dif­fer­ent tasks. The desktop is dir­ec­ted to demon­strate how it is merely a layer on top of the file manip­u­la­tion tasks that can be accom­plished in ter­minal. Through this approach a novice user can most eas­ily deduce how Ter­minal can work for them.

There is a sur­pris­ing amount of back­ground mater­ial presen­ted around spe­cific com­mands which will be of par­tic­u­lar value to users entirely unfa­mil­iar with sys­tems tools. In the area of per­mis­sions for example, Bar­rett provides a con­cise and highly use­ful dis­cus­sion of how per­mis­sions are man­aged in gen­eral on a UNIX-based sys­tem and then shows how this can be accom­plished using ter­minal. This why, how and then example driven approach is a per­fect way to use this guide as a tutorial. As a ref­er­ence manual, syn­tax and options for com­mands are quickly iden­ti­fied which per­mits more exper­i­enced users to quickly refresh their understanding.

Finally, and this is most spe­cific to the eBook, links between related top­ics are copi­ous through the text as page ref­er­ences and as hyper­links so that the guide can be tra­versed as a prob­lem solv­ing manual. This ver­sion of the guide is con­cisely delivered, and up to date for the latest ver­sion of OSX. It is use­ful for a vari­ety of levels of exper­i­ence and is eas­ily adapt­able for each of these levels. As a ref­er­ence source it is simply the best on offer for Ter­minal in OSX. As a tutorial for a novice use it offers very use­ful examples and instruc­tion for a self-paced approach.

[Gino Filicetti]

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