Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012)

Re:Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012) by kps on Saturday August 22, 2020 @01:53PM (#24245832)

A few that I wish hadn't been ignored from 4BSD:

    jot -- print sequential or random data 
    rs  -- reshape a data array
    vis -- display non-printable characters in a visual format

and from Unix >V7:

    apply -- apply a command to a set of arguments
    mc -- multicolumn print

and from AT&T:

    tw -- file tree walk

And then the obligatory personal tools that have stood the test of time:

    align -- align text columns
    crop -- crop lines to a width
    dabl -- delete adjacent blank lines
    dtb -- delete trailing blanks
    emboxxen / deboxxen -- convert to/from box drawing characters
    eol -- convert line endings
    field -- simple line field extraction
    freeze / thaw -- cross-shell synchronization
    mergl -- merge lines into previous lines' blanks
    pad -- pad lines to a width
    put / take -- cross-shell pipe
    uni -- unicode character properties and search

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Re:Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012) by vram22 on Saturday August 22, 2020 @05:22PM (#24247354)

Some of the above can easily be written in C or Python or Ruby (and some of the simpler ones even in shell), at least for simple versions, maybe without all the frills of the originals.

And seq in Linux is like jot for sequential data, at least.

And from my blog: An Unix seq-like utility in Python: https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2017/01/an-unix-seq-like-utility...

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Re:Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012) by kps on Saturday August 22, 2020 @06:41PM (#24247860)

Yes, they're generally available in some form (now generally including the ‘originals’ now that V8–V10 have been published). And they're all very simple, which is the whole point of Unix tools.

I've found I'm using the `put`/`take` pair, for splitting a pipeline across shells, more again in the WFH era where I often have multiple ssh sessions into a machine, when I would probably have used the clipboard in a GUI session. Also useful for things like seeing stderr from different parts of a pipeline in different windows. `put` is just `cat >>$(mkpipe "$1")` and `take` is `cat $(mkpipe "$1")` where `mkpipe` is

    fifo="${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/fifo-$(id -u)-$1}"
    test -p "$fifo" || mkfifo "$fifo"
    echo "$fifo"

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Re:Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012) by vram22 on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @04:37PM (#24357841)

>And they're all very simple, which is the whole point of Unix tools.

Not all Unix tools are simple. E.g. make. But I know what you mean - the Unix philosophy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

The TAOUP book by Eric Raymond (The Art Of Unix Programming) has a lot about that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Unix_Programming

And my IBM developerWorks tutorial / case study on Developing a Linux command-line utility (in C) may be of interest to people who want to write their own Unix tools that play well with others.

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-ar...

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