COMS 114 (Unix tools), Fall 2002

MWF 12:20-13:10, Olin Hall 255

CS 114 is a four week, one credit, S/U only course. It runs September 30, 2002 to October 25, 2002. The drop deadline is Monday, October 7; one week into the course. The course prerequisite is COM S 100 or equivalent programming experience.

From the course catalog description: "An introduction to Unix, emphasizing instruction in tools for file management, communication, process control, and program development. Knowledge of at least one programming language is expected. Projects assume no previous knowledge of Unix or expertise in any particular language."

Instructor

Riccardo Pucella

Office hours: Thursday 14:30-15:30 (in Upson Hall 5151)
Drop me an email if you need to talk to me and the above time is not convenient.

Recent announcements

Most recent first. Old announcements migrate here.

10/28/2002: The submission script for homework 4 is now ready.

10/24/2002: I've added the lecture notes for the last three lectures on shells. I also have homeworks 2 and 3 graded. I'll bring them to class tomorrow. You can also come and pick them up during my office hours today.

10/23/2002: Homework 4 is out, due next wednesday.

Lectures

(Subject to changes)

• Lecture 1 : Introduction to Unix
• Lecture 2 : Files, directories, and permissions
• Lecture 3 : cancelled
• Lecture 4 : Editing with Emacs
• Lecture 5 : Regular expressions
• Lecture 6 : Job control and I/O redirection
• Lecture 7 : More text processing
• Lecture 8 : Shells
• Lecture 9 : Shell variables
• Lecture 10: Shell configuration and scripts
• Lecture 11: More shell scripts

Homeworks

• Homework 1. Due date: 10/7/2002.
• Homework 2. Due date: 10/16/2002.
• Homework 3. Due date: 10/23/2002.
• Homework 4. Due date: 10/30/2002.

Useful links

• Man page viewer on babbage
• Getting started with Pine
• VIM homepage (vim is an "improved" version of the text editor vi)
• GNU Emacs reference card
• GNU Emacs manual
• A tao of regular expressions
• Regular expressions resources on the Web
• A very short introduction to SED
• Another Introduction to SED

Books

UNIX for Programmers and Users, G. Glass & K. Able, Prentice Hall, 1999. [G&A]
Introduction to UNIX, D. I. Schwartz, Prentice Hall, 1999 [DIS]
UNIX in a Nutshell, A. Robbins, O'Reilly, 1999 [AR]

All books are optional.

DIS is great for beginners. It starts from the very basics (it starts with "What is a computer?" to be exact) and slowly explains Unix basics in great detail and lots of examples. Unfortunately it only covers the material of the first several lectures.

G&A has almost everything you'll need for the course, but it's not very verbose.

AR is a reference guide. It does not explain how things work, only what they do. It gives few examples.