Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal

by Joe Kissell

Learn how to unleash your inner Unix geek! Updated Feb 2, 2016 If you've ever thought you should learn to use the Unix command line that underlies Mac OS X, or felt at sea when typing commands into Terminal, Joe Kissell is here to help! With this 167-page ebook, you'll become comfortable working on the Mac's command line, starting with the fundamentals and adding more advanced topics as your knowledge increases. Joe includes 50 real-life "recipes" for tasks that are best done from the command line, as well as directions for working with permissions, carrying out grep-based searches, creating shell scripts, and installing Unix software. "I found answers to many questions in your book, and I enjoyed reading it. I am definitely more confident now in facing the Mac command line. Thank you for the time and art that you spent to create such a clarifying text."
--Mona Hosseini, grad student in Genomic Medicine and Statistics at the University of Oxford The book begins by teaching you these core Next, it's on to the command line, where you'll You'll extend your skills as you discover how Questions answered Finally, to help you put it all together, the book showcases over 50 real-world "recipes" that combine commands to perform useful tasks, such as listing users who've logged in recently, using a separate FileVault password, figuring out why a disk won't eject, copying the source code of a Web page, determining which apps have open connections to the Internet, flushing the DNS cache, finding out why a Mac won't sleep, sending an SMS message, and deleting stubborn items from the Trash.

Genres: Computers, Technical, Technology

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 2, 2009

About the author

Joe Kissell is the author of more than 60 books and hundreds of articles on technology topics. In 2017, he also became the publisher of Take Control Books, when alt concepts—the company he runs along with his wife, Morgen Jahnke—acquired the Take Control imprint from TidBITS Publishing Inc. He was the winner of a 2009 Neal award for Best How-to Article, and formerly wrote for publications such as Macworld, TidBITS, and Wirecutter. Before he began writing full-time in 2003, Joe managed software development for Nisus Software and Kensington Technology Group. In his hypothetical spare time, Joe likes to walk, cook, read, and practice tai chi. He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, with Morgen and their sons.

Reviews

[Irene Ong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very practical book that’s free of frills. I appreciated Kissell’s straightforward writing style! It helped convey the technical information in a very digestible and easily understandable manner. I come from a computer science background, but I believe anyone could pick up this book and start working with the command line.

[Radivoje Panic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very practical book!

In short content, all aspects of the terminal are processed. And ordinary amateurs can learn and use terminal. Very practical book.

[Vibhor Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book served a beginner guide to learn about the terminal and interact with it. Most of the basics, are covered and is more than enough for an average Mac user ( like myself ).

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly written and contains a lot of useful information.

[Brian Rivard · Rating 5 out of 5]

An indispensable book if you really want to get the most out of your Mac.

[Raphael Dahomay · Rating 5 out of 5]

while true; do Sleep 0.5; say “That book was highly helpful”; done

[Zofie]

A bit basic knowledge.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

great starter book

I had a easy working through this ebook with it on one side of the screen and terminal in the other. Most commands taught work for both linux and OS X.

[Anton Antonov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joe Kissell wrote a good introductory book for the OSX terminal but that's about it. As a CLI user from another OS, there's really nothing to learn here.

[Lekan Kazeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Kissell is a legend, definately one of my favorite academic authors after reading this book.

[Hailong Hao · Rating 4 out of 5]

最近事多，靠读 Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal by Joe Kissell 放松，刚刚读完。此书算是把我之前只会乱用乱改加瞎猜的命令行基础知识和技能系统梳理了一遍，虽然有些浅，对于新手来说也是一本不错的教程了。