Adopt 10 good habits

Ten good habits to adopt are:

  1. Make directory trees in a single swipe.
  2. Change the path; do not move the archive.
  3. Combine your commands with control operators.
  4. Quote variables with caution.
  5. Use escape sequences to manage long input.
  6. Group your commands together in a list.
  7. Use xargs outside of find.
  8. Know when grep should do the counting — and when it should step aside.
  9. Match certain fields in output, not just lines.
  10. Stop piping cats.

Make directory trees in a single swipe

Listing 1 illustrates one of the most common bad UNIX habits around: defining directory trees one at a time.
Listing 1. Example of bad habit #1: Defining directory trees individually

~ $ mkdir tmp
~ $ cd tmp
~/tmp $ mkdir a
~/tmp $ cd a
~/tmp/a $ mkdir b
~/tmp/a $ cd b
~/tmp/a/b/ $ mkdir c
~/tmp/a/b/ $ cd c
~/tmp/a/b/c $

It is so much quicker to use the -p option to mkdir and make all parent directories along with their children in a single command. But even administrators who know about this option are still caught stepping through the subdirectories as they make them on the command line. It is worth your time to conscientiously pick up the good habit:
Listing 2. Example of good habit #1: Defining directory trees with one command

~ $ mkdir -p tmp/a/b/c

You can use this option to make entire complex directory trees, which are great to use inside scripts; not just simple hierarchies. For example:
Listing 3. Another example of good habit #1: Defining complex directory trees with one command

~ $ mkdir -p project/{lib/ext,bin,src,doc/{html,info,pdf},demo/stat/a}

In the past, the only excuse to define directories individually was that your mkdir implementation did not support this option, but this is no longer true on most systems. IBM, AIX®, mkdir, GNU mkdir, and others that conform to the Single UNIX Specification now have this option.

For the few systems that still lack the capability, use the mkdirhier script (see Resources), which is a wrapper for mkdir that does the same function:

~ $ mkdirhier project/{lib/ext,bin,src,doc/{html,info,pdf},demo/stat/a}

Change the path; do not move the archive

Another bad usage pattern is moving a .tar archive file to a certain directory because it happens to be the directory you want to extract it in. You never need to do this. You can unpack any .tar archive file into any directory you like — that is what the -C option is for. Use the -C option when unpacking an archive file to specify the directory to unpack it in:
Listing 4. Example of good habit #2: Using option -C to unpack a .tar archive file

~ $ tar xvf -C tmp/a/b/c newarc.tar.gz

Making a habit of using -C is preferable to moving the archive file to where you want to unpack it, changing to that directory, and only then extracting its contents — especially if the archive file belongs somewhere else.
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Combine your commands with control operators

You probably already know that in most shells, you can combine commands on a single command line by placing a semicolon (;) between them. The semicolon is a shell control operator, and while it is useful for stringing together multiple discrete commands on a single command line, it does not work for everything. For example, suppose you use a semicolon to combine two commands in which the proper execution of the second command depends entirely upon the successful completion of the first. If the first command does not exit as you expected, the second command still runs — and fails. Instead, use more appropriate control operators (some are described in this article). As long as your shell supports them, they are worth getting into the habit of using them.

Run a command only if another command returns a zero exit status

Use the && control operator to combine two commands so that the second is run only if the first command returns a zero exit status. In other words, if the first command runs successfully, the second command runs. If the first command fails, the second command does not run at all. For example:
Listing 5. Example of good habit #3: Combining commands with control operators

~ $ cd tmp/a/b/c && tar xvf ~/archive.tar

In this example, the contents of the archive are extracted into the ~/tmp/a/b/c directory unless that directory does not exist. If the directory does not exist, the tar command does not run, so nothing is extracted.

Run a command only if another command returns a non-zero exit status

Similarly, the || control operator separates two commands and runs the second command only if the first command returns a non-zero exit status. In other words, if the first command is successful, the second command does not run. If the first command fails, the second command does run. This operator is often used when testing for whether a given directory exists and, if not, it creates one:
Listing 6. Another example of good habit #3: Combining commands with control operators

~ $ cd tmp/a/b/c || mkdir -p tmp/a/b/c

You can also combine the control operators described in this section. Each works on the last command run:
Listing 7. A combined example of good habit #3: Combining commands with control operators

~ $ cd tmp/a/b/c || mkdir -p tmp/a/b/c && tar xvf -C tmp/a/b/c ~/archive.tar
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