Brian P. Hogan - Small, Sharp Software Tools: Harness the Combinatoric Power of Command-Line Tools and Utilities

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Thank you, Susannah Pfalzer, for working with me on the initial version of this book. Weve worked on a lot of things together, and I still hear your editorial voice in my ear every time I write something.

Thank you, Tammy Coron, for editing this book and challenging me to think more deeply about my writing style and my approach. Youre great to work with, and I appreciate the effort you put in to keeping me organized and on track!

Thank you, Andy Hunt, for publishing this book. Weve talked about something like this for a long time, and Im glad were finally getting it done.

Thank you, Janet Furlow, for all you do to make every book we publish amazing. You do so much behind the scenes. I appreciate all you do.

Special thanks to Eric Wackwitz for being a sounding board as I developed and refined the curriculum which led to this book. And thanks to the hundreds of students who explored these exercises in class and in their homework. Your feedback was invaluable.

This book has a lot of content, and explaining it hasnt been easy. Bash is a tricky subject, and various versions of tools make it even more challenging. Im grateful to Trevor Bramble, Tim Chase, Andrew Herrington, Dan Kacenjar, Will Langford, Andy Lester, Sidharth Masaldaan, Greg Myers, Ryan Palo, Dan Sarauer, and Jessica Stodola for their time and feedback on this book. They caught a lot of mistakes and some poor explanations. I am incredibly grateful for their feedback.

Thank you to my business associates Mitch Bullard, Kevin Gisi, Alex Henry, Jeff Holland, Chris Johnson, Nick LaMuro, Erich Tesky, Myles Steinhauser, Josh Swan, Charley Stran, Mitchell Volk, Chris Warren, Mike Weber, and Andrew Vahey for your continued support.

Thank you, Ana and Lisa, for your love and inspiration.

Finally, thank you, Carissa, for your love and support, and for all you do for our family. I wouldnt be able to write books if it werent for you.

The graphical user interface , or GUI, is designed for the average user and provides most of the necessary features needed for user interaction. Your smartphone doesnt have a user-accessible command-line interface, or CLI, because its aimed at the average consumer. You are only able to access basic features. But youre not an average consumer. Youre a programmer, a software developer crafting the best code from the finest bits. With command line, you can do everything you can do in the GUI, and morethat is, if you know how.