If you don't use the bash shell, just skip this post. If you do use the bash shell, tho, then you'll want to check out "Bash Shell Shortcuts", which contains all the ctrl-, alt-, & tab-based keyboard shortcuts you'll ever really need to know to get maximum efficiency out of bash. This is one to print out & keep, folks. It's that good. (Check out all of our posts on bash & the command line.) ...

OK, not EVERYTHING, but it comes pretty dang close. I'm talking about the GNU Bash Reference Manual, which is - I know you're shocked, shocked! - free. However, you can buy it, & if you support the GNU project, it sure couldn't hurt. There's a ton of great info in this text about that oh-so-fantabulous bash shell, so if you're a command line maven - or you want to become one - this is the book for you. (Check out all of our posts on bash.) ...

If you live on the command line like I do, and you find that you're constantly SSHing into machines all over God's green earth, then you really must stop whatever it is you're doin' & go read this little piece on screen. Here's the link - The Antidesktop - but you'll need to scroll down a tiny lil' bit to find the section titled "screen". Basically, screen allows you to have virtual terminal sessions inside one terminal session. Don't know what I'm talkin' about? Read the little article! (Check out all of our posts on SSH, bash, & the command line.) ...

Gad, but I love my command line. There's always more to learn about that infinitely powerful tool, & I'm always lookin' to learn more. This free book will give you lots of valuable info about the bash shell & what you can do with it: GNU Bash Reference Manual. It's not an overview of every command in the world - don't worry; I'll be getting to that - but it's instead an overview of how bash works & behaves. CLI junkie? Get this one! (Check out all of my posts on bash & books.) ...

This fella on a mailing list I'm on wants to rename files (specifically, .mpe to .mpg) on his Mac OS X box using the command line, but doesn't know how. The great Robert Citek to the rescue! Here's his suggestion: for file in *.mpe ; do mv $file ${file%.mpe}.mpg ; done However, Robert then went on to make this interesting suggestion: "Personally, I like to echo the command and proof it. If I like it I can then pipe it into bash. That allows you to catch the case when there are several .mpg files and no .mpe files." for file in *.mpe ; do echo mv $file ${file%.mpe}.mpg; done | bash Great idea, Robert! Thanks! Oh, and by the way: this same technique works just fine and dandy on a Linux box as well. (Check out all of our posts on scripting, bash, or renaming.) ...

Well, no surprise here: Apple bitched that the "iPodder" name, used by open source software that grabs podcasts for you on Mac, Windows, & Linux, was confusing people who might think that it was supported directly by Apple, so they've had to change the name. The new name: Juice. The new web site: http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/. Of course, the Linux guys, being Linux guys, went their own way slightly with their name, which is CastPodder, & which is located at http://borgforge.net/projects/castpodder/. Me, I still prefer bashpodder, a simple bash shell script, & my good buddy Ed Howland (with some aid from Robert Citek) has been coding his own version in Ruby that will see the light of day on this blog very, very soon. In the meantime, if you're looking to listen to some podcasts, check out Juice or CastPodder. They're good stuff. (Check out all of our posts on podcasting or bashpodder.) ...

My buddy Robert Citek has been interested, over the last couple of years, in ways to kill Unix machines. In other words, he tries to create scripts that will bring *nix machines to their knees. His interest isn't malicious - he's one of the most honest guys I know - but he thinks that by understanding where the weaknesses are, it will better enable him to shore those up and turn weaknesses into strengths. Robert knows Linux really, really, really well (actually, he knows RPM-based distros really well; Debian-based distros are still something new to him), but he bought a Mac OS X laptop a year ago, so now he's focusing on ways to kill Mac OS X (which is still Unix, remember). Here's his latest report, from the CWE-LUG mailing list: <Robert's email> I was able to successfully kill my Mac last night with the following script [Scott: remove the blank lines from the script; this blog's wysiwyg keeps inserting them]: perl -le ' @foo=qw(hello) ; for (my $i ; $i<100 ; $i++) { ...