(another) New UNIX system book

[Mark Horton]

UNIX FOR USERS

Miller, CDF, and Boyle, RD, Blackwell Scientific Publications,
(1984) 210 pp., $12.95.  Distributed in North America by Computer
Science Press, 11 Taft Court, Rockville, MD 20850

UNIX FOR USERS is an excellent new UNIX book which has just come
to the US and Canada.  It's primarily intended for beginning UNIX
users.  This book is an illustrated guide and assumes no familiarity
with other computer systems.  Instead, it aims to provide an
introduction to the complete novice as well as the experienced
user who wants to know something of UNIX.

The system principally considered is UNIX 7, with the alternative
terminal driver, which is now generally standard in UNIX installations.
Other similar systems, in particular the Berkeley UNIX and System V
are also considered.  Care is taken to point out those aspects that
vary between systems.

CONTENTS: Part 1: Introduction; Simple Commands; Editing; Files;
Directories and Users; The Shell Command Language; Command Scripts;
More Commands; C and the UNIX Programming Interface; Systems Admin-
istration and Maintenance;  Part 2:  Other UNIX Systems; Text Processing,
Other Editors; Survey of Other Software; An Outline of System Internals.

---------------------

The above is verbatim text received from Computer Science Press.
They also sent me a copy of the book; I have not read it but I
have glanced through it.  My overall impression is that this is
the first book I've seen that seems aware of the proliferation of
versions of UNIX and takes care to point out the differences a user
is likely to run into with their local system.  It seems written at
the novice user, much like the typical intro documents that computer
centers and universities tend to hand out.  Of course, it's polished
as you would expect a book to be.

The book is not perfect.  It's typeset in the Hershey font, which I
personally find to be an ugly font (but at least it's not the one
from Berkeley/Toronto!)  I did notice typos skimming through it, and
some of them can be confusing.  (For example, when they talk about ed,
all the "get out of input mode" dots are missing, and the text only
says to type a "full-stop" to get out.  I had to look up "full-stop"
in an unabridged dictionary to find out it means "period".  Perhaps
this is common usage in England, where the authors are from, or perhaps
they are more into typesetting jargon than the typical novice user.)
They also seemed to feel that since ed is available everywhere, that
it is a good editor for a novice to start on, I disagree with this.

The book is quite readable and treats some features not found in V7,
such as vi and csh.  Overall it's probably a good book for a beginner,
unless you dislike the emphasis on ed.

The mention of the alternative tty driver above isn't clear to me either.
The book mentions the stty command with only the -echo option and
refers you to the manual; the part on ioctl mentions the V7 tty ioctls
like TIOCSETP only.  They do mention settable characters and list common
choices for them.