<li><ahref="#a-book-about-the-command-line-for-humans">a book about the command line for humans</a>
<ul>
@ -116,7 +58,9 @@ not license it under more restrictive terms than that.</p>
<li><ahref="#the-command-line-as-literary-environment">1. the command line as literary environment</a>
<ul>
<li><ahref="#terms-and-definitions-twisty-little-passages">terms and definitions / twisty little passages</a></li>
<li><ahref="#terms-and-definitions">terms and definitions</a></li>
<li><ahref="#get-you-a-shell">get you a shell</a></li>
<li><ahref="#twisty-little-passages">twisty little passages</a></li>
<li><ahref="#cat">cat</a></li>
<li><ahref="#wildcards">wildcards</a></li>
<li><ahref="#sort">sort</a></li>
@ -159,7 +103,9 @@ not license it under more restrictive terms than that.</p>
<li><ahref="#further-reading">8. further reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div></p>
</div>
</div></div>
<hr/>
@ -184,7 +130,7 @@ for working with English prose and prosody, and that maybe this will illuminate
the ways it could be useful in your own work with a computer, whatever that
work happens to be.</p>
<h2><aname=terms-and-definitions-twisty-little-passageshref=#terms-and-definitions-twisty-little-passages>#</a> terms and definitions / twisty little passages</h2>
<h2><aname=terms-and-definitionshref=#terms-and-definitions>#</a> terms and definitions</h2>
<p>What software are we actually talking about when we say “the command line”?</p>
@ -218,6 +164,10 @@ It’s what you’ll most often see in the wild. Like most shells, Bash
and stupid in more ways than it is possible to easily summarize. It’s also an
incredibly powerful and expressive piece of software.</p>
<h2><aname=get-you-a-shellhref=#get-you-a-shell>#</a> get you a shell</h2>
<h2><aname=twisty-little-passageshref=#twisty-little-passages>#</a> twisty little passages</h2>
<p>Have you ever played a text-based adventure game or MUD, of the kind that
describes a setting and takes commands for movement and so on? Readers of a
certain age and temperament might recognize the opening of Crowther & Woods'
@ -272,7 +222,7 @@ can be used on many different files, or chained together with other programs.
They tend to have weird, cryptic names, but a lot of them do very simple
things. Tasks that might be a menu item in a big program like Word, like
counting the number of words in a document or finding a particular phrase, are
often programs unto themselves.</p>
often programs unto themselves. We’ll start with something even simpler.</p>
<h2><aname=cathref=#cat>#</a> cat</h2>
@ -2447,32 +2397,33 @@ called Night. <del>So the</del> <ins>And there was</ins> evening and <del>the
<h1><aname=the-internet-for-humans-and-how-the-command-line-can-helphref=#the-internet-for-humans-and-how-the-command-line-can-help>#</a> 7. the internet for humans, and how the command line can help</h1>
<p>Web browsers are really complicated these days. They’re full of rendering
engines for layouts and graphics and fonts, audio and video players, one or
more programming languages, sophisticated development tools, databases – you
name it, and there’s a fair chance it’s in there somewhere. The modern web
browser is kitchen sink software, and to make matters worse, it is <em>utterly
surrounded</em> by technobabble. It takes smart, dedicated people <em>years</em> to
come to terms with the ocean of words about web stuff and sort out the
meaningful ones from snake oil and bureaucratic mysticism.</p>
engines, audio and video players, programming languages, development tools,
databases – you name it, and there’s a fair chance it’s in there somewhere.
The modern web browser is kitchen sink software, and to make matters worse, it
is <em>totally surrounded</em> by technobabble. It can take <em>years</em> to come to terms
with the ocean of words about web stuff and sort out the meaningful ones from
the snake oil and bureaucratic mysticism.</p>
<p>All of which can make the web itself seem like an absurdly complicated
landscape, and obscure the simplicity of its basic design, which is this:</p>
<p>All of which can make the web itself seem like a really complicated landscape,
and obscure the simplicity of its basic design, which is this:</p>
<p>Some programs pass text files around to one another.</p>
<p>It’s more complicated than that, of course, but the gist of it is that the web
is made out of URLs, “Uniform Resource Locators”, which are paths to things.
If you squint, these look kind of like paths to files on your filesystem. A
protocol called HTTP lets software like your browser send a request over the
network for the stuff that lives at a particular URL.</p>
If you squint, these look kind of like paths to files on your filesystem.</p>
<p>Let’s illustrate this. I’ve written a really simple web page that lives at