I've been using *nix for a while, but there are things in here I haven't used (tr, for example, and I haven't used much awk). A nice little diversion, and it's

I've been using *nix for a while, but there are things in here I haven't used (tr, for example, and I haven't used much awk). A nice little diversion, and it's something I'd feel comfortable showing to a newbie if I were nearby to help out. Definitely worth going through, yourself, if you've got some spare time and want to use a little more of your shell. NB: Don't pull up man pages right away (like I did for tr); the author explains things after using them. Which works out pretty well. EDIT1: Additionally, it's fun to rewrite some of these using tools I use more regularly. E.g. replace the first uses of tr with grep. I prefer tr, now, though; it makes more sense to "translate" non letter chars to newlines than to just print all occurrences of a n-letter match.