Re: shell script with top "can't get terminal attributes"?
Re: shell script with top "can't get terminal attributes"?
- Subject: Re: shell script with top "can't get terminal attributes"?
- From: Christopher Nebel <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 11:40:58 -0800
On Monday, February 11, 2002, at 06:14 AM, Charles Arthur wrote:
More generally, though, as one who's excited by this big hinterland
discovered in /usr/bin/ and /usr/sbin/ - in fact is standing there
staring
like stout Cortez with eagle eyes and a wild surmise on this Pacific of
software - how does one find out what the hell all those programs *do*,
and
which is the right one to do whatever with?
Is there a ready reference out there, or even buried OMM?
Well, there are the man (short for manual) pages already on your
system. Fire up Terminal, type "man <command-name>", and there you
are. (A useful variant is "apropos", which will give you a list of all
commands that mention a keyword in their summary.) The trouble with man
pages is that they're designed as a reference manual; if you don't
already have a good idea of what command you want, then they're not very
helpful [1].
If you want a tutorial to shell scripting, then I can't help you in more
than very general terms. There have been any number of books written on
the topic, so there are lots to choose from. O'Reilly books are of
course well regarded, and I hear they've been putting some introductory
stuff online for interested Mac OS X users.
--Chris Nebel
AppleScript Engineering
[1] On the other hand, if you've got the time and nerve, you can engage
in dumpster diving, Unix style. Look in the various executable
directories (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/bin) for
commands that sound interesting, and then see if there's a man page for
them. You can also find good bits by chasing the cross-reference links
at the bottom of most man pages.
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