Hacker News with Generative AI: Unix

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
144 points by lnyan 15 hours ago | 27 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
24 points by thesuperbigfrog 3 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
50 points by thunderbong 6 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 10 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 14 days ago | 21 comments
Unix Programmer's Manual Third Edition [pdf] (1973) (dspinellis.github.io)
Unix, Programming, History, Manuals, Software
190 points by rbanffy 15 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 17 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 22 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 30 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 32 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 35 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 37 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 37 days ago | 1 comments
Apple macOS 15 Sequoia is officially Unix (theregister.com)
Apple macOS 15 Sequoia appeared in mid-September and is an official, compliant version of UNIX™, but that may not mean exactly what you think.
Operating Systems, Apple, Unix
84 points by pjmlp 39 days ago | 68 comments
Apple macOS 15 Sequoia is officially Unix (theregister.com)
Apple macOS 15 Sequoia appeared in mid-September and is an official, compliant version of UNIX™, but that may not mean exactly what you think.
Apple, macOS, Unix, Operating Systems, Technology
10 points by LorenDB 41 days ago | 2 comments
Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good (theregister.com)
EuroBSDcon 2024 One of Stefano Marinelli's NetBSD boxes sat quietly serving for a decade, because everyone forgot about it. This is how Unix is meant to be.
Operating Systems, BSD, Linux, Unix
49 points by rodrigo975 43 days ago | 26 comments
Show HN: My microkernel-based OS built from scratch now has basic Unix commands (github.com/lux-operating-system)
lux (intentionally stylized in lowercase) is a portable work-in-progress microkernel written from scratch that currently runs on x86_64, with future plans for an ARM64 port.
Operating Systems, Open Source, Programming, Microkernels, Unix
69 points by jewelcodesxo 43 days ago | 8 comments
The Unix Workbench (seankross.com)
This work by Sean Kross is licensed CC0. Zero rights reserved.
Unix, Operating Systems, Tools, Command Line
5 points by thunderbong 45 days ago | 1 comments
Daemonization in Unix programs is probably about restarting programs (utoronto.ca)
It's standard for Unix daemon programs to 'daemonize' themselves when they start, completely detaching from how they were run; this behavior is quite old and these days it's somewhat controversial and sometimes considered undesirable. At this point you might ask why programs even daemonize themselves in the first place, and while I don't know for sure, I do have an opinion. My belief is that daemonization is because of restarting daemon programs, not starting them at boot.
Unix, Operating Systems, Programming, History
86 points by ingve 45 days ago | 59 comments
Traditionally, init on Unix was not a service manager as such (utoronto.ca)
Init (the process) has historically had a number of roles but, perhaps surprisingly, being a 'service manager' (or a 'daemon manager') was not one of them in traditional init systems.
Operating Systems, Unix, System Administration
39 points by rbanffy 46 days ago | 2 comments
Idiomatic Awk (2010) (backreference.org)
This is just one of many possible ways to do this.
Programming, Tools, Text Processing, Unix
132 points by StefanBatory 46 days ago | 33 comments
The Heart of Unix (2018) (ericnormand.me)
Despite all of its warts, I like working in Linux.
Unix, Operating Systems, Linux
150 points by kugurerdem 48 days ago | 103 comments
Mount Unix system into Common Lisp image (github.com/PuellaeMagicae)
Unix, Common Lisp, Programming, Operating Systems, Software
107 points by BoingBoomTschak 61 days ago | 21 comments
Exploring pre-1990 versions of wc(1) (2023) (sigwait.org)
Can you blame a tool that doesn't support a standard X when the tool was written before X was invented?
Software, Operating Systems, History, Unix, Programming
58 points by henry_flower 64 days ago | 25 comments
S6 – Skarnet's small supervision suite (skarnet.org)
s6 is a small suite of programs for UNIX, designed to allow process supervision (a.k.a service supervision), in the line of daemontools and runit, as well as various operations on processes and daemons.
Unix, System Administration, Process Management, Software, Open Source
98 points by tosh 69 days ago | 40 comments
Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison (blogsystem5.substack.com)
Over the years, I’ve repeatedly heard that Windows NT is a very advanced operating system and, being a Unix person myself, it has bothered me to not know why. I’ve been meaning to answer this question for years and I can do so now, which means I want to present you my findings.
Operating Systems, Windows, Unix, Comparison, History
648 points by LorenDB 73 days ago | 609 comments
Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment (netmeister.org)
Unix, Programming, Operating Systems
31 points by mariuz 76 days ago | 10 comments
Beyond Ctrl-C: The dark corners of Unix signal handling (sunshowers.io)
Imagine you’re in the middle of a conversation, when suddenly, a tap on the shoulder interrupts your train of thought. You turn to face the interloper, only to find a dear friend with an urgent message. In that moment, you’re faced with a choice: do you ignore the interruption and continue your conversation, or do you pause to address your friend’s needs?
Unix, Operating Systems, Programming, Software Development
165 points by PuercoPop 77 days ago | 71 comments
Beyond Ctrl-C: The dark corners of Unix signal handling (sunshowers.io)
Unix, Programming, Operating Systems, Signals
16 points by sunshowers 78 days ago | 1 comments
Parsing Awk Is Tricky (raygard.net)
Programming, Unix, Tools
110 points by oliverkwebb 80 days ago | 90 comments