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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."

16 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. I tried mastering cat. by SuperBry · · Score: 5, Funny

    But I kept on getting scratched...

    1. Re:I tried mastering cat. by ControversialMatt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's your problem. It's not your cat, you're his person.

  2. Re:How about the followup? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd prefer the follow up "Mastering Pussy"

  3. Damn. by castorvx · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was hoping for a manual to help me read the icanhascheezburger comments.

  4. How hard is it to get CAT to work with HURD? by TinBromide · · 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 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The trick to controlling a cat Hurd is pipes... lots of pipes.

  5. O HAI by Oxy+the+moron · · Score: 5, Funny

    I CAN HAZ DIS BOOK NOW PLZ??

    --

    Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.

    1. Re:O HAI by Bob+The+Cowboy · · 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?

  6. Neuter to decrease aggression by wonmon · · Score: 5, Funny

    rm -r testes

    1. Re:Neuter to decrease aggression by kg9ov · · 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.

  7. Re:I use... by Tetsujin · · 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.
  8. Re:I'm more intersted in tail than cat. by drooling-dog · · Score: 5, Funny

    That would be useful. And if there was one on mastering head, I'd buy it for the GF...

  9. Re:Frist Psot? by cayenne8 · · 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.........
  10. Re:I just /usr/bin/cat my coffee everywhere. by steveha · · Score: 5, Informative

    As an aside, remember kids, don't do this:

    cat foo | grep bar

    It is bad Unix!

    Eh, it's not that big a deal.

    Yes, you can simply say "grep bar foo" and it will have the same effect with less typing. But it's really not that big a deal, and there are times when I would do this. Usually it is because I'm doing something like this:

    shell_script foo | grep bar

    And I'm not getting the results I expect; then I might swap out the shell script part for cat, to help me debug. It's easier to type

    cat !*

    or even

    ^shell_script^cat

    than to retype the whole command.

    As long as you know what you are doing, build the command line any way you like. The computer exists to serve you, not the other way around...

    Now someone will mod me (-1, No Sense of Humor) or (-1, Beating the Joke Into the Ground). But I regret nothing! Nothing, I tell you.

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  11. Wrong cover by dlsmith · · 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.)

  12. Re:I'm more intersted in tail than cat. by fwice · · Score: 5, Funny

    >---joke--->

       O
      \|/    <--- you
      / \

    WHOOSH