How to be a UNIX stud

(or just look like one)

There are many steps to becoming a true UNIX stud. Here are three important areas of UNIXness to consider.

Choosing an editor

First of all, you have to choose your favorite editor. The two most common editors in Unix are emacs and vi. Pick one. Both work very well, have large followings, and have their own strengths and weaknesses (or "growth potential areas," in today's namby-pamby pop psychology lingo). It doesn't really matter which one you choose, as long as you are religiously devoted to it. This includes, but is not limited to:

claiming to possess an inhuman depth of knowledge about your editor -- whether you know anything or not
belittling new users of your editor
decimating users of the other editor
knowing useless esoteric facts and trivia about your editor (e.g. "Betcha don't know what ma10j"ay'a:e#50G"aP does!")

As a veteran Unix stud, I chose vi. It is the best editor. People who don't know as much as I do about my editor are stupid. People who use other editors are even stupider. It's great because I know everything about it. Hey! I'll bet you don't know what ma10j"ay'a:e#50G"aP does!

As part of my religious devotion to my editor, and as an effort to initiate new users into the school of vi, I wrote the vi bible. The more users I get to use vi, the more vi users I am better than. It all follows the Path, don't you see? I dream of having vi neophytes say, "Corby taught us everything we know!" I will think to myself, "Yeah, but not everything I know."

Knowing command etymology

UNIX is known as a User-Hostile Operating System, and it's a deserved reputation. The commands are short and cryptic and have little indecypherable command line options or non-existant user interfaces. Try typing ed or bc, for example, and see if you can find out what they do.

UNIX studs always feel better when they know things other people don't. One of the ways they can do this is by showing off that they know why or where these cryptic UNIX commands got their names. See how many you know. Click on the command name to get its etymology.

awk: pattern processing language
bash: command shell
cron: runs a command at a specified time
emacs: editor
GNU: Richard Stallman's project
grep: pattern matcher
less: file viewer
ls: directory lister
lex: parser/tokenizer
nroff: text processor
perl: pattern processing language
sed: pattern matcher
shar: archiver
tar: archiver
uudecode: converts ASCII to binary
yacc: pseudo compiler

Knowing funny commands

You've got to have a sense of humor to really like UNIX. Here are a couple commands you can type to have fun at all your geeky UNIX parties. They don't work the same on every system, but they're often pretty close. The commands that start with a "%" are /bin/csh commands, and the ones that start with "$" are /bin/sh commands.

     % cat "food in cans"
     cat: can't open food in cans

     % nice man woman
     No manual entry for woman.

     % rm God
     rm: God nonexistent

     % ar t God
     ar: God does not exist

     % ar r God
     ar: creating God

     % "How would you rate Quayle's incompetence?
     Unmatched ".

     % [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
     Missing ].

     % ^How did the sex change operation go?^
     Modifier failed.

     % If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?     
     Too many ('s.

     % make love
     Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

     % sleep with me
     bad character

     % got a light?
     No match.

     % man: why did you get a divorce?
     man:: Too many arguments.

     % !:say, what is saccharine?
     Bad substitute.

     /* not csh but sh */
     $ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
     no sense in pretending!

     $ drink <bottle; opener
     bottle: cannot open
     opener: not found

how to be a UNIX stud / corby@intuit.com
last updated April 6, 1998