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Text formatting in Unix A Unix Primer by Ann Nicols and Nice Approximately 20% of the book Lomuto. Published by PrenticetHai In- ternational. X15.95. 239 pp. would be really useful to the serious Although the title, A Unix Primer, would lead you to suppose that this book is an easy introduction to the Unix operating system, it would perhaps be better described as a guide to text formatting on a Unix computer. Of its 230 odd pages, well over half of the book is concerned with editing and formatting text files by means of the Unix ‘ed’ editor and ‘nroff text for- matter. Th.at said, those chapters con- stitute a first-class introduction to an extremely powerful text formatter. Unix novice; the chapter entitled ‘You Are Not Alone’, provides a useful summary of some of the most common Unix commands including a guide to communicating with other users with the ‘mail’ utility, and the chapter ‘Un- iquely Unix’ presents an introduction to Shell programming, one of the most powerful and sophisticated features of Unix. Despite its failings, it is clear that the authors have taken a great deal of Of the rest, however, much is de- voted to the various types of terminal the user may encounter, and how their characteristics (baud rate, echo, etc.) may be changed by means of the ‘stty’ (set tty) command. trouble over this work; the text is very readable throughout, often illustrated with amusing drawings, and the exam- ples are clear and easily understood. Also. most chapters contain several ex- ercises, each of which is provided with a well explained solution; this is all too rare nowadays in books of this type. In conclusion: this book is probably most useful to a student or academic who wants to produce a thesis or pub- lication without recourse to profes- sional typists. It constitutes quite a useful introduction to text formatting under Unix, but at g15.95, I doubt that it will reach a wide audience. BRIAN WILLIAMS University of Sussex Christine Mullins Butterworth Scientific Limited - Journals Division I PO Box 63 Westbury House Bury Street Guildford I Telephone: 0483 31261 Telex: 859556 SCITEC G m I would like a sample copy q Name Organisation and address ~0125 no 9 november 1983 43
