grep Pocket Reference is the first guide devoted to grep, the powerful Unix content-location utility. This handy book is ideal for system administrators, security professionals, developers, and others who want to learn more about grep and take new approaches with it -- for everything from mail filtering and system log management to malware analysis. With grep Pocket Reference, you will:
Learn methods for filtering large files for specific content
Acquire information not included in the current grep documentation
Get several tricks for using variants such as egrep
Keep key information about grep right at your fingertips
Find the answers you need about grep quickly and easily. If you're familiar with this utility, grep Pocket Reference will help you refresh your basic knowledge, understand rare situations, and work more efficiently. If you're new to grep, this book is the best way to get started.
Chapter 1 grep Pocket Reference
Introduction
Conceptual Overview
Introduction to Regular Expressions
grep Basics
Basic Regular Expressions (grep or grep -G)
Extended Regular Expressions (egrep or grep -E)
Fixed Strings (fgrep or grep -F)
Perl-Style Regular Expressions (grep -P)
Introduction to grep-Relevant Environment Variables
Choosing Between grep Types and Performance Considerations
John Bambenek is a programmer and teacher with over ten years of experience. His work at the Internet Storm Center and the University of Illinois, as well as his contributions to SANS information management courses, will help him promote this book and give him a sound base from which to write.
Agnieszka Klus was born in Rzeszow, Poland and came here as a child. She lives in the northwest suburb of Chicago, but considers herself a Chicagoan. She is currently trying to get her Masters in Accountancy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and also works as a system administrator at the Coordinated Science Laboratory.
I needed a book that would teach me REGEX and how better to use grep/fgrep, but without having to learn PERL and JAVA. (ie. Master Regular Expressions contains over half the data relevant to other languages.)
This "grep Pocket Reference" did a good job of explaining the grep options in tandem with the it's Manual Page. Although few, I thought the examples near the end were great. However, the examples seemed to be themed on personal private data searching rather then something more relevant to a computer users -- but they could easily be converted.
This EBook needs some corrections (a reprint including errata?) as it contains some grammar or run-on sentences which conflict and provide incorrect data. Also, there's a sentence in the book stating, in effect, it's OK or legal to use fgrep to search other peoples EMail. I'm no lawyer, but this doesn't sound correct. Again, those few sentences probably need a little rewording.
All in all, besides the fact it needed a good proof reading -- the book taught me what I needed to learn about grep as it's manual page lacks examples and a certain amount of clarity. (Currently, grep's manual page is written like a specification rather then something focused towards a user, omitting example usage.)
(There is a small chapter on Perl REGEX. ie. --perl-regexp)
If you need a book to learn REGEX and have a little trouble with the GREP Manual Page, or don't want to read a huge book like Mastering REGEX, get this book for learning REGEX (aka BRE/ERE).
Also noteworthy, the MOBI formated EBook version of this "grep Pocket Reference" is the first readable MOBI EBook I've been able to read so far on my Kindle DXG. This book had few TABLE TAGS (or computer technical drawings/coding). And of the presented console/terminal text presented, it was readable unlike many other MOBI technical books I've tried to read.
