Additions to this Page

This is a collection of resources to get you up and running with Linux for CSE 374 and reference sources to use during the quarter. Please post suggestions for additions or changes on the discussion board or mail them to the course staff.

Linux Environments

• x86-64 Linux for CSE 374 - using virtual machines (VMs) and the shared klaatu.cs.washington.edu machine.
• CSE home VM - information about getting your own CSE Linux virtual machine

Books, Etcetera

• Linux Pocket Guide by Daniel Barrett - textbook for CSE 374. Either edition (1st or 2nd) is fine. If you know your way around this book you should have more than enough Linux/Unix background for this course.
• Basic Linux notes (written for CSE 351 so some details are different, but most of it is directly usable).
• Stanford CS library: Unix Programming Tools

Online References

• Online Documentation
• Bash Reference Manual
• gdb (debugger) reference
• Subversion book (version control)
• GNU grep manual
• GNU sed manual
• GNU make manual
• tar command examples
• bash Scripting Style Guidelines
• Some Bash Scripting Style Hints (bash-hackers.org)
• More Bash Scripting Style Hints (wooledge.org) (in particular, see part 3 about READABILITY)
• Lint tool for checking shell scripts
• Regular Expressions
• Regular expressions definition (wikipedia)
• Regular expressions (2007, Machtelt Garrels)
• Regular expressions (2012, Mendel Cooper)
• Regular expressions tutorial (use links on left hand side to navigate tutorial)
• Examples of using regular expressions with grep
• Examples of useful regular expressions
• Interactive regular expression tester (*)
• Interactive visual regular expression tester (*)
• Interactive regular expression builder (*)
• Regular expression cheat sheet (*)
• (* There are many flavors of regex syntax and these tools may not always match bash. Our LPG book is the definitive source for which special characters are permitted and how patterns are interpreted.)
• Some uses for regular expressions (pattern matching)
• Security: sanitizing or whitelisting input to web forms and other applications
• Find: find a file by name; find content within a file
• Find and replace: find some text (in a filename, a command line, within a file) and replace it with something else
• Try to clean up data by finding and replacing to a standard pattern (ex., phone numbers with parentheses, dashes, or periods all mixed together, (555) 123 4567, 555-123-4567, 555.123.4567)
• Find text patterns for something else, such as Scrabble or a crossword puzzle

Stress Relief

And for a different point of view, The Unix-Haters Handbook (over 300 pages, for when you're feeling frustrated?)

Annotated In the beginning was the command line by Neal Stephenson, 1999 (original around 60 pages, annotated 2004 by Garrett Birkel)

XKCD (an awesome web comic)

• Save the day by knowing regular expressions
• The importance of sanitizing or whitelisting your input
• Hmm, maybe it was harder than it looked
• Using regular expressions to search and replace text
• Is it really possible to remember every little detail of every command?
• What really happens with tech support
• Did you read the manual/instructions/documentation?