Slashdot Mirror
Interview With the Author of "Mastering Cat"
Shlomi Fish writes "O'Reilly is publishing a new book titled 'Mastering cat,' about the UNIX 'cat' command. Here is an interview O'Reilly-Net conducted with the author about it. Read it to see if this book should be part of your bookshelf of technical books."
?tac gniretsam
*.sig
Maybe? There really should be an achievement for this.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
your april fools jokes are getting dumber and dumber every year
But I kept on getting scratched...
I'll put it right next to "The Story About Ping" http://www.amazon.com/Story-About-Ping-Marjorie-Flack/dp/0140502416
man cat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex42OGGarrE
Usage: Not used. EVER. Run. Fast and far. QUICKLY.
Sent from your iPad.
April 1st is over. Even under normal circumstances it is hard to judge seriousness of typical Slashdot posts, but today, I simply refuse to participate in filtering out April Fools detritus from the usual. I am going to get on my Amiga 2000 and play Giana Sisters. That is all.
I was hoping for a manual to help me read the icanhascheezburger comments.
This is about the worst day of the year. Thankfully nobody in my office celebrates this. AT ALL.
Much more interesting is this new product from thinkgeek, known as squeez bacon.
Squeez-Bacon
It's the worlds most perfect food.
You can't master any cat, only dogs. As the saying goes - dogs have masters, cats have staff.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I've been trying to get my cat to play nice with gnu Hurd for a while. It seems like it starts to work, but then starts to ignore all IO and proceeds to SLEEP(3600). I am eagerly awaiting someone who can get a cat Hurd to work.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I CAN HAZ DIS BOOK NOW PLZ??
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
An april 1 tech story that actually made me laugh a little. Nice.
I'm going to print that cover so I can put it over an old book on my bookshelf.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Unlike a lot of people around here I have really enjoyed today's April Fool's jokes. However, this is just lazy.
I guess I forgot what day it was, but the title article made me spew my coffee in laughter.
As an aside, remember kids, don't do this:
cat foo | grep bar
It is bad Unix! (If you don't know why, read the non-existent book on cat...) ;)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
were found dead. Apparently they were playing a drinking game, and doing a shot for every lolcats reference on Slashdot.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
I am going to get on my Amiga 2000 and play Giana Sisters. That is all.
Giana Sisters... nice...
You know, though, I've listened to a lot of SID music and recently decided to check out some Amiga Music for the first time... I found the Amiga version of the Giana Sisters tune surprisingly dull compared to the C64 version. What is up with that?
Bow-ties are cool.
Oh, for cryin' out loud, can't we have a simple day of gags without all this whining and bitching? Even people tagging stories are having a fit.
It's April Fool's Day. Slashdot has a long tradition of doing stupid crap on this day. Either enjoy it for what it is, or turn off the Intertubes and go do something else until tomorrow. Just stop f-ing bitching and moaning about it like it's seriously messing up your day.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
rm -r testes
I'm still waiting for "Mastering true" and "Mastering false". The delay is understandable, considering nobody is able to harness the true power of these two commands.
...Schroeder's cat. If it works, you don't know it, but if it doesn't you have to try again until you get it to work (if you can tell that it worked anyway). Then the pipe comes out to stop my mind frying.
AUTHOR
Written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard M. Stallman.
My guess is Torbjorn Granlund coded it and RMS takes the credit
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Funny writing. It was obviously a joke, but the concept was so funny that knowing this going in didn't change anything.
It's obviously an April Fool's prank, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was an entire book dedicated to the more obscure uses of cat and differences between GNU cat and others.
My logic for this is reading about netcat, being completely bewildered, and being even more completely bewildered when the description of sample command lines read that it "works just like cat!"
If they released a book on how to master tail (heck, even find tail), it would change slashdot forever.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How will this ever outsell the wildly popular "Cat for Dummies"?
It would be a great laugh when someone stops by to borrow one of my other books.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
~# date
Wed Apr 1 13:31:50 EDT 2009
~# links2 -dump http://slashdot.org/ >> humortest.txt
~# cat humortest.txt | grep $somethingfunny
~#
Had they titled this book "Mastering Pussy (cat)" they would've probably made the NY Times Best Seller list.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
EDS.
Best Slashdot Co
But don't mess with echo, though. When everything else breaks on your unix OS, and you only have builtins alone, you just need echo and some pipes to get it back on it's feet.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Many discussions between real nerds about seemingly trivial OS topics have gone on for far more than book-length of obscure, historical and political commentary. I sort of find it humbling how much history there is for a lot of the components of UNIX.
I am inclined to stay out of these conversations. I never advertise my point of view because I can't be bothered to try and convert the evangelists to my point of view. I won't convince them, they won't convince me; we'd just end up annoying co-workers and further marginalizing ourselves socially at work.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
Protip: IGNORE IT.
Seriously, if you hate all these stories so much, leave /. for the day. It won't kill you. You know they're going to be here all day, so come back tomorrow. You'll be happier because you won't be reading the stories, and we'll be happier because you won't be bitching about our fun.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
<http://jl.photodex.com/dog/>, the link given for the /.ted).
dog program, is broken, and the first Google hit
seeking a replacement is unresponsive (probably
However, <http://manpagehelp.net/manpage/linux/man1/dog.html>
gives a good overview.
Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install dog
Gentoo: sudo emerge sys-apps/dog
slashdottagsshorterthanhaikunewartform
I much prefer Mastering cat to Teach Yourself cat in 24 Hours.
The second edition of "Mastering Cat" will include in-depth coverage of the use of "cat" in the new generation of object-oriented Unix shells. Key topics will include:
You think I'm joking? Watch me. Hopefully what I come up with won't be quite the nightmare I'm trying to describe above. :D
Bow-ties are cool.
I'm still trying to get the hang of cd!
it's not even Caturday yet.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Any book about cat must include tac. I cannot believe the interview didn't mention it once.
Very disappointed, tac is at least as complicated as cat.
Slashdot Beta should die a painful death.
Cat cannot open tin cans.
It's gone midday. Donkey ears for you.
'nuff said, check today's date.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
leave /. for the day
But.... I'm working on 12 points in my consecutive days on Slashdot achievement.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
isn't this day over yet?!
No, and this place won't return to what ever sliver of sanity sanity it normally has until it is the 2nd of April everywhere on the planet.
here's a what a simple cat implementation looks like (The book leeaves additional features as an exercise to the reader):
"mastering tac". uhhuhu.
Best SID sound ever. Someone give him an UNDERRATED mod up pls!
cat Mastering\ Cat.pdf > /dev/null
I've done that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This was a good one!
We now need a book on Mastering SUDO . . .
there must be more to that than cat spelled backwards
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
that there isn't a command or language called BATE. Of course most of the people here wouldn't need a manual for that.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
This book will become part of a new O'Reilly serie. The other books will be
touch cookbook
Running grep
Practical uniq Management
Advanced fsck for system administrators
|: The missing manual
Except that all the other flipping news websites and blogs are at it too...
Bloody everything...
The story submitter missed out on the video link to the interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0
O'Reilly would never put a picture of a cat on a book about "cat". It's way too obvious. (Well, nevermind.)
The other day I tried to bring up the man page of man, and it didn't have one. I was sad.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
This purrfect for today.
These jokes are becoming lame, but cat is definitely one useful tool.
Well, I'm sure they can come up with an OReilly cookbook for cat. Cat is handy in a lot of situations. Consider these:
Concatenating the output of two PS files. Then you can merge two documents together into a single PDF. .signature to an email message, useful in scripts.
Concatenating your
Concatenating your self-extracting executable to its' data.
Using cat to pipe data into multiple filters all at once, without needing temporary disk space.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was such a book at all.
Everyday's Caturday.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
The "ecode" is adding extra lines in there.
http://www.amazon.com/Master-Cat-David-Garnett/dp/0333178378/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238611553&sr=8-5
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
That's probably because you misread the title as masturbating when it should have been mastering. (Sorry, it had to be said.)
I've been told that Hurding cats is like trying to control large numbers of some sort of small obstinate animal.
Come on, it's 2009, shouldn't it be 'Mastering lolcat'?
The Libertarians want you to realize that people can efficiently and honorably Haz their own Cheezeburgers. The allegories are subtle: you can rely on the Invisible Hand of the market to bring your Invisible Sandwich, and you can do it all without empowering the dangerous surveillance state metaphorically represented by Ceiling Cat Watching You.
I couldn't find it on either Amazon (for my Kindle) or on O'Reilly. But I got a lot out of the article. I was surprised that he didn't include versions for Linux, but maybe that's in another edition of the book.
I'm a bit confused about the fact that there is a lynx at the cover cover of this book. I think that maybe a cat would suit much better.
sylar:~$ polecat how_to_get_rid_of_skunks.txt
bash: polecat: i hate you
Thisbookisveryhelpfulbutmissingaveryimportantchapterinmyopinion.Iusecatoneverythingnow,it'slikemyownmini-vi,ormini-emacsforthoseofyouwholikeemacs.Ihaven'treadeverychapteryet-Ireadalittleslowly.ButonedayIwillbeacompletemasterofcat.Catmaster,that'swhattheywillcallme.
meow... meow meow meow meow miao Mew.
...what's the pix on the cover? A dog?
Have gnu, will travel.
Your point was valid until you insinuated that there are people in this universe that actually enjoy this lame joke clusterfuck.
I wish people would 'master' "cat" enough to know when *not* to use it. For example, I'm tired of seeing
cat filename | application
instead of (shorter, and more efficient):
application < filename
for in such there is a lot of money to be made.
all that happens when I "cat furry" is I get bit on my machine.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
leave /. for the day
That's possible ?
Did you expect any less from the folks that publish make magazine? (Two UNIX command references in one sentence! I win! We can all go home now.)
I tried /box
/box
/box
/box I found two files...
schroedinger>mkdir
then
schroedinger>mv cat
Then when I went to look in
schroedinger>ls
cat cat.dead
it's not in the manual...
Why bother
Mastering yes.
master baiting
Ask Me About... The 80's!
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4691/masteringtruecover.jpg
I am excited to see that.
The only thing annoying about this day is all the idiots with no sense of humor saying "make it stop" or "isn't this day over yet".
Seriously, remove the sticks that are up your asses and lighten the hell up.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
leave /. for the day. It won't kill you.
Speak for yourself.
Getting a Grep On Your Log: 101 Ways to Maximize Your Log Usage
You will need to have a firm grasp on tail and head as well as know the difference between less and more in order to truly master your log.
Caution should be used when using cat on your log as it could damage your log permanately (sharp claws and teeth, OUCH!)
--
In a mad world, only the mad are sane!