Fun_People Archive
16 Nov
The Unix alphabet

Date: Thu, 16 Nov 95 12:59:40 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: The Unix alphabet

Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: Mike Karels <karels@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: Greg Minshall <minshall@Ipsilon.COM>
Forwarded-by: "Stans Kleijnen" <stans@ipsilon.com>

The ABCs of Unix
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A is for Awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for Biff, which reads all your mail.

C is for CC, as hackers recall, while
D is for DD, the command that does all.

E is for Emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for Fsck, which rebuilds your trees.

G is for Grep, a clever detective, while
H is for Halt, which may seem defective.

I is for Indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for Join, which nobody uses.

K is for Kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for Lex, which is missing from DOS.

M is for More, from which Less was begot, and
N is for Nice, which it really is not.

O is for Od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for Passwd, which reads in strings twice.

Q is for Quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for Ranlib, for sorting ar [sic] table.

S is for Spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for True, which does very little.

U is for Uniq, which is used after Sort, and
V is for Vi, which is hard to abort.

W is for Whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.

Y is for Yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for Zcat, which handles compression.

© 1995 Peter Langston