Handy for those who don't use sed and awk every day. I keep it in my cube.

This little book is great. I've only had it for about a week. I needed to match some text today with a pattern that was a little bit more involved than my usual simple needs. I flipped through a few pages and found some examples that quickly helped me derive the search pattern I needed in a few minutes.

I have the full "sed & awk" second edition book, but I went to the pocket reference instead. I would not have been able to find what I needed in the larger book as quickly.

Some have complained about some of the pocket references lacking indexes. This one doesn't have one, but it's so easy to use that it doesn't need one. Just flip and few pages and you'll find what you need. As far as I'm concerned time is money. This little book has paid for itself in one weeks use.

Sed and awk are the mainstay for those of you who write shell scripts on unix/linux machines that manipulate text files. It is difficult to overstate the usefulness of these two programs.

So O'Reilly and Robbins decided to help you by providing this pocketbook reference that encapsulates the online help for the programs. The book is aimed at someone who programs, but still prefers a traditional hardcopy reference as an aid to human memory. It assumes that you basically already know how to use the programs, but just need some reminder as to the exact syntax and all the possible options.

I use this pocket reference more then any other reference for sed and awk. This is mostly a syntax guide for folks who already know sed and awk. If you don't know sed and awk, get the Ellen Quigleys 'Unix Shells'(for beginners) followed by O'Reillies 'Sed and Awk' reference. (Big book.) I tend to forget exactly how to do something, so I will just quickly look at my bookmarked pocket reference, and flip quickly to an example of syntax to get that bash code going correctly. If your desk has as many papers and books on it as mine, this is nice for freeing up some elbow room, while keeping the big books on the bookshelf most of the time.

I bought this "book" because I am writing a program that deals extensively with strings and text (natural language parsing). I was having some difficulty mastering sed, and understanding how it works. For example, "s/[^A-Za-z]//" was not working (to remove non alpha chars). After five pages in this little gem, I knew what I needed. A trailing "g".

The book is rich with examples, explanations, and really just cuts straight to the chase.

This is not a book for the casual user. It is, after all, a reference, not a tutorial. Unix users (and administrators) who already have a basic grasp of regular expressions and just what sed and awk are (and grep/egrep too) will find this most rewarding.

While I have a hard time paying this much for what amounts to less than toaster oven instructions, it is absolutely invaluable to me, and it doesnt take up space on my desk or bookshelf.