Using csh & tcsh: Type Less, Accomplish More

Csh and tcsh are no good for shell scripting, but they're great for an interactive shell. With bash, the reverse is true. So, like reviewer Rob below, I'll just stipulate (in the legal sense) that the reviewers who panned this book for its lack of coverage of scripting didn't get it.With that out of the way---this is a nice little book. Aimed at a beginner or intermediate audience, it doesn't cover absolutely everything that can be done with the c-shell variants (that's what the man page is for), but it gives clear explanations of the interactive features that distinguish them from other command-line environments (e.g. Windows' woefully inadequate CMD.EXE). Command recall is a brilliant feature of tcsh that is covered especially well---you can bring back any command typed previously in that shell session, applying modifiers such as a Perl- or awk-like substitution operator, which could save you many minutes repeatedly typing similar commands during the course of a workday.I believe a good argument can be made for what I claimed above, that bash is markedly inferior to tcsh when used interactively; unfortunately, bash is the default shell for most (all?) Linux installs, so it's nice for Linux beginners to have a clear reference to an alternative that may work better for them.At the used price of under a dollar from many Marketplace sellers, purchase of this one should be a no-brainer.

The five reviews of this book that have come in ahead of mine range from 1 star to 5! The reason is simple, but the people panning the book didn't explain (or understand?) the problem very well.Here's the dope: a Unix shell is both an interactive command interpreter, and an environment for writing scripts, which are basically programs using the interactive commands and some logical control structures to automate tasks that don't really need to be run interactively.The author of this book, Paul Dubois, is of the opinion that neither csh nor tcsh are appropriate environments for shell scripting. I happen to disagree with him, at least insofar as I teach a little shell scripting in tcsh in my sophomore level software course. However, his opinion is worthy...making the argument that csh and tcsh shouldn't be used for shell scripting. Dubois recommends sh and perl for scripting.So it boils down to this: this is an excellent book for learning how to make the most of the interactive environment of csh and tcsh. It's loaded with neat tricks and good insights. And it's a particularly good reference for tcsh, which usually gets little mention in other books.If, on the other hand, you want a book about shell scripting, save your money: THIS IS NOT THE BOOK FOR YOU. It has no material on shell scripting.

An absolute novice might find this book useful...but the book is thin and skips a myriad of essential info for the power user. Not one of the better 'nutshell' books.

This book is for learning how to use the tcsh and csh shells from the command line, not for scripting. If you want scripting look elsewhere. You will be as disappointed as all of the one and two star reviewers you see here. However, in particular if you want information on the turbo C shell (tcsh), this is one of the few books on the subject, even if it is 13 years old. As with all O'Reilly books on Unix, in particular the ones written before the year 2000, this one knows its audience and has plenty of practical information. Turbo refers to speed though, not clarity. If you are not willing to memorize some shortcuts that are not exactly straightforward looking, maybe you should stick with plain old C shell (csh). The table of contents can be hard to find for this old book, so I include it next:Part I, Learning the BasicsChapter 1, Introduction, discusses the purpose of the shell and describes how to change your login shell to one of those discussed in this handbook.Chapter 2, A Shell Primer, provides a summary of introductory essentials. If you already know something about running commands, you can skim this chapter as a review or skip it.Chapter 3, Using the Shell Effectively, is an overview of many of the facilities that the shell provides to help you work more efficiently--easy, practical ways to get more out of the command line. Often, even experienced users are not aware of all of these features. This chapter gives you a glimpse of the kinds of techniques that are covered in detail in the rest of the book.Part II, Becoming More EfficientChapter 4, The Shell Startup Files, describes ~/.cshrc and ~/.login, the files that the shell uses to initialize your working environment. This chapter also provides guidelines for modifying the startup files to suit your preferences.Chapter 5, Setting Up Your Terminal, discusses how to find out what your terminal's special characters are (e.g., for backspacing) and how to change them if you don't like the default settings.Chapter 6, Using Your Command History, discusses how to type less by using your command history.Chapter 7, The tcsh Command-Line Editor, describes the facilities offered by the editor which enable you to edit commands interactively.Chapter 8, Using Aliases To Create Command Shortcuts, discusses how to type less by using the shell's alias mechanism to create command shortcuts.Chapter 9, File-Naming Shortcuts, describes ways in which the shell can supply filename arguments for you so that you don't have to type them all out yourself.Chapter 10, Filename and Programmed Completion, describes how to use the shell for completing filenames after you type just the leading prefix. It also discusses how tcsh can complete other types of words besides filenames and how to set up programmed completions.Chapter 11, Quoting and Special Characters, describes the shell's quoting rules. By following these rules, you can type any characters in a command line, even special ones, without having them misinterpreted.Chapter 12, Using Commands To Generate Arguments, discusses command substitution, a facility that lets you construct pieces of a command line from the output of other commands.Chapter 13, Navigating the File System, describes how to move around in the file system efficiently.Chapter 14, Keeping Track of Where You Are, describes how to stay informed about your current location in the file system.Chapter 15, Job Control, shows how to suspend, resume, and kill jobs; switch between jobs; and move jobs between the foreground and background.Part III, AppendixesAppendix A, Obtaining and Installing tcsh, describes how to make tcsh available on your system if you don't have the current version.Appendix B, csh and tcsh Quick Reference, is a summary of those features and capabilities of csh and tcsh described in this handbook.Appendix C, Other Sources of Information, contains pointers to other documentation. The most important of these references is the tcsh manual page. It's available in several forms, one of which can be navigated via hypertext links with a World Wide Web browser.All readers should start with Chapter 1. If necessary, change your login shell to csh or tcsh, using the instructions there. If you're a beginner, unfamiliar with the shell, or just want to review the basics of executing simple commands, you should then proceed to Chapter 2. If you're also having trouble figuring out how to do things like getting your terminal to backspace correctly, you may find it helpful to read Chapter 5.Chapter 3 is designed to "jump start" you into better use of the shell by presenting lots of shortcuts that save you time and effort. You'll quickly become a more fluent command-line user by applying the information you find here. For a more systematic and topical approach to the shell's capabilities, look at the chapters in Part II. They explain in greater detail the features of the shell that were briefly demonstrated in Chapter 3.Finally, use the index. The shell's features interrelate, so you'll often find that a particular capability can be applied in many different contexts, and most likely will be discussed in several places.

Too simple. Not useful at all.

I do not understand the bad reviews either.With that said, as a long time sh users around the time the book was publshed someone changed my shell to csh on the server I was working on and would not allow be to set it back. So I bought the book to learn csh. I have moved on from that company, but because of how clearly the book was written and how it explained the unique aspects of csh/tcsh, I have stuck with tcsh as my preferred interactive shell ever since. Very easy to understand and get up to speed with csh/tcsh interactive use.

Un livre que j'utilise au quotidien. Pense bete et astuce qu'on n'a pas envisage. Rien a dire. Surtout pour le csh qui est moins utilise pour cause... Interessant en cas de support ou maintien d'un script ecrit par un autre