Hacker News with Generative AI: Unix

1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected (tuhs.org)
Hi everyone, First-time poster here. Near the end of last year, I did some forensic analysis on the DMR tapes (https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes) and had some fun playing around with them. Warren forwarded a few of my emails to this list at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, but it was never my intention for him to be my messenger, so I'm posting here myself now.
Unix, History, Software, Operating Systems, Archive
374 points by henry_flower 21 hours ago | 98 comments
Schemesh: Fusion between Unix shell and Lisp REPL (github.com/cosmos72)
Schemesh is an interactive shell scriptable in Lisp.
Lisp, Shell, Programming Languages, Unix
176 points by cosmos0072 5 days ago | 49 comments
Show HN: Mapping the Unix Magic Poster – An Interactive Annotation Project (drio.github.io)
The su command (short for “substitute user” or “switch user”) is used to start a shell under a different user account. Typically, one of the most common uses of su is switching to the superuser (root) account to gain administrative privileges.
Unix, Shell, Security, Programming, Interactive Projects
77 points by drio 9 days ago | 29 comments
Douglas McIlroy responds to Unix spell article with new implementation details (twitter.com)
Unix, Programming, History, Software
163 points by abhi9u 14 days ago | 14 comments
Fiwix: Small Unix-Like Kernel (fiwix.org)
Fiwix is an operating system kernel written from scratch, based on the UNIX architecture and fully focused on being POSIX compatible.
Operating Systems, Unix, Kernel
79 points by coolcoder613 15 days ago | 40 comments
The practical (Unix) problems with .cache and its friends (utoronto.ca)
Unix, Programming, Software, Cache
37 points by ingve 15 days ago | 43 comments
Origins of Common Unix Programs (darwinsys.com)
This is my attempt to show where key parts of the Unix/Linux command hierarchy came from.
Unix, Linux, History, Command Line, Operating Systems
52 points by leonry 32 days ago | 21 comments
The surprising struggle to get a Unix Epoch time from a UTC string in C or C++ (berthub.eu)
So how hard could it be. As input we have something like Fri, 17 Jan 2025 06:07:07 in UTC, and we’d like to turn this into 1737094027, the notional (but not actual) number of seconds that have passed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
Programming, C++, Time, Unix
131 points by PascalW 32 days ago | 90 comments
The history and use of /etc/glob in early Unixes (utoronto.ca)
One of the innovations that the V7 Bourne shell introduced was built in shell wildcard globbing, which is to say expanding things like *, ?, and so on.
Unix, Operating Systems, History, Shell, Programming
68 points by zdw 39 days ago | 47 comments
lc: List files in categories (and columns) – from Coherent Unix clone (github.com/gdm85)
This is a port of 'lc' (List files in categories and columns) from MWC (Mark Williams Company) Coherent UNIX.
Unix, Open Source, Software, Programming
78 points by networked 41 days ago | 31 comments
/bin/sh: the biggest Unix security loophole (1984) [pdf] (tuhs.org)
Unix, Security, History, Programming, Operating Systems
101 points by vitplister 43 days ago | 54 comments
Seconds Since the Epoch (aphyr.com)
This is not at all news, but it comes up often enough that I think there should be a concise explanation of the problem. People, myself included, like to say that POSIX time, also known as Unix time, is the number of seconds since the Unix epoch, which was 1970-01-01 at 00:00:00.
Unix, Programming, Time, Software
298 points by zdw 57 days ago | 220 comments
Biggest shell programs (github.com/oils-for-unix)
Programming, Shell Scripting, Unix
259 points by todsacerdoti 76 days ago | 123 comments
Unix Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler (computeradsfromthepast.substack.com)
The worst problems occur when people walk into their office and—without warning—find technology they never asked for.
Unix, History, Technology, Interviews, Magazines
45 points by rbanffy 80 days ago | 13 comments
When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? (2019) (stackexchange.com)
On all Unix-like operating systems, sudo is often provided as the standard package for executing commands as superuser (or an alternative user). When sudo is invoked by the user for the first time, many systems print the following well-known "Sudo Warning":
Unix, Operating Systems, Security, Sudo, History
158 points by Boogie_Man 81 days ago | 176 comments
Disillusioning the Magic of the Fork System Call (codingconfessions.com)
Unix-like operating systems famously use the fork system call for creating a new process. The way this system call works in the user code can be quite bewildering when you first learn about it.
Operating Systems, Unix, Programming
7 points by rbanffy 82 days ago | 1 comments
Disillusioning the Magic of the Fork System Call (codingconfessions.com)
Unix-like operating systems famously use the fork system call for creating a new process.
Operating Systems, Unix, Programming, System Calls
21 points by RojerGS 85 days ago | 0 comments
Pipe Viewer – A Unix Utility You Should Know About (catonmat.net)
Hi all! I'm starting a new article series here. This one is going to be about Unix utilities that you should know about. The articles will discuss one Unix program at a time. I'll try to write a good introduction to the tool and give as many examples as I can think of.
Unix, Programming, Tutorials
236 points by lnyan 92 days ago | 44 comments
Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf (theregister.com)
Miles’ version of the .logout file included the notoriously dangerous rm -rf ~* command, which erases everything it can find in a user’s home directory.
Unix, Programming, Mistakes, Security, Software
25 points by thesuperbigfrog 94 days ago | 27 comments
S/Sed/Ed (aartaka.me)
This post starts with holding a grudge: Posix regular expressions are extremely hard to get wrong? Uh... Have you really written any? Sounds like you might not really know either Posix or PCRE. u/bigmell in reply to 5 (Wrong) Regex To Parse Parentheses
Regular Expressions, Programming, Text Processing, Unix, Software
51 points by thunderbong 98 days ago | 29 comments
Brian Kernighan Reflects on Unix: A History and a Memoir [video] (youtube.com)
Unix, Operating Systems, History, Computer Science, Memoirs
173 points by zdw 101 days ago | 32 comments
Lynis – Security auditing and hardening tool, for Unix-based systems (github.com/CISOfy)
Lynis - Security auditing and hardening tool, for UNIX-based systems.
Security, Unix, Auditing, Tools
67 points by Qision 105 days ago | 21 comments
Unix Programmer's Manual Third Edition [pdf] (1973) (dspinellis.github.io)
Unix, Programming, History, Manuals, Software
190 points by rbanffy 107 days ago | 34 comments
The history of Unix's ioctl and signal about window sizes (utoronto.ca)
One of the somewhat obscure features of Unix is that the kernel has a specific interface to get (and set) the 'window size' of your terminal, and can also send a Unix signal to your process when that size changes.
Unix, Operating Systems, Terminal Emulators, Signals
113 points by ingve 108 days ago | 48 comments
Unix core utilities implemented in Haskell (github.com/Gandalf-)
Unix core utilities implemented in Haskell.
Programming, Haskell, Unix
243 points by ocean_moist 114 days ago | 95 comments
Against /tmp (dotat.at)
I commented on Lobsters that /tmp is usually a bad idea, which caused some surprise. I suppose /tmp security bugs were common in the 1990s when I was learning Unix, but they are pretty rare now so I can see why less grizzled hackers might not be familiar with the problems.
Security, Unix, Operating Systems
257 points by todsacerdoti 121 days ago | 159 comments
The useful use of cat (mrmr.io)
Some people insist that we should never use a cat.
Unix, Command Line, Programming
96 points by LorenDB 123 days ago | 105 comments
bc Is the Only Calculator You Need in Unix (medium.com)
bc, for basic calculator, is an arbitrary-precision calculator language with syntax similar to the C programming language. In this post, we will explore the features of bc and how to use it.
Unix, Programming, Command Line, Calculators
5 points by theali 126 days ago | 1 comments
Unix for Poets: Basic NLP Tasks Using Unix Tools (medium.com)
Often, we become so captivated by complexity and sophistication that we overlook the profound effectiveness of simple, fundamental methods.
Unix, Programming, Text Processing, Data Analysis
7 points by theali 128 days ago | 0 comments
We Should Teach Students Unix, or the Power of Pipes (atthis.link)
Teaching the command-line is increasingly eschewed for all-in-one IDEs and web platforms. For long-term transferable skills, we should revisit UNIX in Computing curriculums.
Education, Programming, Operating Systems, Unix
7 points by ggpsv 129 days ago | 1 comments