Interview With the Author of "Mastering Cat"

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Interview With the Author of "Mastering Cat"

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 1, 2009 @05:01AM from the waste-of-words dept.

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."

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How about the followup? by Fittysix · 2009-04-01 05:02 · Score: 3, Funny

?tac gniretsam

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*.sig
1. Re:How about the followup? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-04-01 05:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I'd prefer the follow up "Mastering Pussy"
2. Re:How about the followup? by lord_rob+the+only+on · 2009-04-01 05:30 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  rob@thinkpad:~$ pussy
  bash: pussy: command not found
  rob@thinkpad:~$ man pussy
  No manual entry for pussy
  Pussy doesn't even exist ...
3. Re:How about the followup? by h4rm0ny · 2009-04-01 05:39 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Pussy doesn't even exist ...
  That's strange. When I try:
  
  h4rm0ny@mybox~$ grep -r pussy *
  
  I get lots and lots of results.
  
  --
  
  Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
4. Re:How about the followup? by oldspewey · 2009-04-01 05:52 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  No manual entry for pussy
  I think I see the problem here - try starting her off with 3 or 4 vodka appletinis.
  
  --
  If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
5. Re:How about the followup? by palegray.net · 2009-04-01 07:11 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  pparadis@alpha:~$ vodka bash: vodka: command not found pparadis@alpha:~$ appletini bash: appletini: command not found pparadis@alpha:~$ tequila bash: tequila: command not found pparadis@alpha:~$ liquor bash: liquor: command not found pparadis@alpha:~$ beer The program 'beer' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install gerstensaft bash: beer: command not found Wow, I'm off to install beer on my laptop now.
  
  --
  512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
6. Re:How about the followup? by jonbryce · 2009-04-01 07:42 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  pussy does exist, however there is no documentation for it, so you have to figure it out for yourself.
  The other thing is, it isn't in $PATH, and slocate doesn't index it, so finding it is an exercise in itself.
I tried mastering cat. by SuperBry · 2009-04-01 05:03 · Score: 5, Funny

But I kept on getting scratched...
Re:Frist Psot? by snowraver1 · 2009-04-01 05:06 · Score: 3, Funny

There is, but it only works if you are logged in as AC and if you post either a goatse pic, a long post about Obama's shit, or an instruction manual for someone of african decent.

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How hard is it to get CAT to work with HURD? by TinBromide · 2009-04-01 05:10 · Score: 5, Funny

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?
1. Re:How hard is it to get CAT to work with HURD? by mrogers · 2009-04-01 05:17 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The trick to controlling a cat Hurd is pipes... lots of pipes.
O HAI by Oxy+the+moron · 2009-04-01 05:10 · Score: 5, Funny

I CAN HAZ DIS BOOK NOW PLZ??

--
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
1. Re:O HAI by Bob+The+Cowboy · 2009-04-01 05:27 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I CAN HAZ DIS BOOK NOW PLZ??
  --
  Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
  I knew it... lolcats is a grassroots movement started by the Libertarians to... uhh... get... cheezeburgers?
In the news today, a group of IT professionals ... by Phizzle · 2009-04-01 05:13 · Score: 3, Funny

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.
Neuter to decrease aggression by wonmon · 2009-04-01 05:17 · Score: 5, Funny

rm -r testes
1. Re:Neuter to decrease aggression by kg9ov · 2009-04-01 05:34 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The cat probably won't be as open to that as you may think... I would suggest using the -f option as well, just to be sure.
2. Re:Neuter to decrease aggression by upside · 2009-04-01 05:56 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  How do you remove testes recursively? Are cat testes like Russian dolls? If so, is this somehow related to them having nine lives? Perhaps it makes sense. To kill a cat with any certainty you'd have to do something like
  
  kill -9 $(ps axe | cut -d" " -f1 | tail -1 | head | cat)
  which - as we know - is an arcane Unixish incantation to kill the cat by putting it in a bag and cutting somewhere between the tail and head with an axe nine times.
  Or maybe you meant rm -f
  P.S. I take no responsibility if you're stupid enough to run that command. Anything or nothing could happen.
  
  --
  I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
3. Re:Neuter to decrease aggression by Zashi · 2009-04-01 06:07 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Parent's command only works after you touch testes
  
  --
  Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
4. Re:Neuter to decrease aggression by wonmon · 2009-04-01 06:33 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Honestly, I used rm -r because I was thinking that ball1 and ball2 (and sometimes ball3) would be subdirectories, each containing millions of incomplete cat executables.
5. Re:Neuter to decrease aggression by megaditto · 2009-04-01 08:31 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Inside the testes are smaller cats with smaller testes... In fact, it's the ever-shrinking copies of cats with testes all the way down.
  
  --
  Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Still Waiting by Kushieda+Minorin · 2009-04-01 05:21 · Score: 4, Funny

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.
I'm more intersted in tail than cat. by Maxo-Texas · 2009-04-01 05:28 · Score: 4, Funny

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.
1. Re:I'm more intersted in tail than cat. by drooling-dog · 2009-04-01 05:35 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  That would be useful. And if there was one on mastering head, I'd buy it for the GF...
2. Re:I'm more intersted in tail than cat. by Just+Some+Guy · 2009-04-01 06:14 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Alternatively, you could master head. I hear there's demand for it in certain log processing circles.
  
  --
  Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
3. Re:I'm more intersted in tail than cat. by fwice · 2009-04-01 06:27 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  >---joke---> O \|/ <--- you / \ WHOOSH
Here goes: by IceCreamGuy · 2009-04-01 05:32 · Score: 4, Funny

~# date
Wed Apr 1 13:31:50 EDT 2009
~# links2 -dump http://slashdot.org/ >> humortest.txt
~# cat humortest.txt | grep $somethingfunny
~#
1. Re:Here goes: by curunir · 2009-04-01 10:52 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You must not have gotten to the chapter entitled "Advanced Cat" (page 2). Cat can also be used as a target for piped output.
  Try: ~# wget -o /dev/null -O - http://www.slashdot.org/ | cat | cat | cat | grep $somethingfunny ~#
  Voila! No temp file needed. And all due to the power of cat (hint: the third one is the most important.)
  
  --
  "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Re:I use... by Tetsujin · 2009-04-01 05:34 · Score: 5, Funny

...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.
That's "Schrodinger's cat". Your license to make quantum mechanics jokes is hereby revoked. To make sure you don't try to take your license back, we're going to keep you updated on its current velocity.

--
Bow-ties are cool.
Upcoming second edition in 2012 by Tetsujin · 2009-04-01 05:39 · Score: 4, Funny
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:
- "cat" type safety
- Using "cat" in traditional mode vs. object-oriented
- "cat" pitfalls: attempting to run "cat" on non-serializable live objects, "cat" on lists vs. "cat" on text files, using "cat" to capture user input (and dealing with the untyped data stream that results...)
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.
But... by cstdenis · 2009-04-01 05:41 · Score: 4, Funny

it's not even Caturday yet.

--
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Re:Frist Psot? by cayenne8 · 2009-04-01 05:47 · Score: 5, Funny

"What is this "African Decent" you speak of? :)"
Well, it is like regular Descent, except rather than flying through caves, you are flying through a dry, arid desert area. And rather than lasers and smart bombs, you get a spear. If lucky, you get a power up weapon of a coke bottle that comes to you from the gods in the sky.

--
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Wrong cover by dlsmith · 2009-04-01 06:18 · Score: 5, Funny

O'Reilly would never put a picture of a cat on a book about "cat". It's way too obvious. (Well, nevermind.)
Re:I use... by Tetsujin · 2009-04-01 08:32 · Score: 3, Funny

That's "Schrodinger's cat". Your license to make quantum mechanics jokes is hereby revoked.
That's Schrödinger's cat. Your licence to use Latin characters outside the 7-bit ASCII range is hereby revoked.
Well, I don't have a license to use Latin characters outside the 7-bit ASCII range - which accounts for why I didn't. :D
But, still, touche. (D'oh! I did it again!)

--
Bow-ties are cool.