CSC 271
Software I

Utilities and Internals
Instructor: Dr. Stephen Bloch
Fall, 1997

This course meets from 12:15-1:30 PM TTh in Business 39. We'll use the book An Introduction to Unix, by Paul S. Wang, as well as a lot of online documentation and some handouts.

The syllabus is available in LaTeX, DVI, and Postscript, and HTML.

A schedule of lectures tells what I plan to talk about, and what I expect you to have read, by each class meeting.

I taught this course in Fall 1994, Fall 1995, and Fall 1996 as well, and some information and handouts are still available from those classes.

Homework assignments

Homework 1 due 23 Sept
Half-hour demonstration in my office that you know what you're doing.
Homework 2 assigned 7 Oct, due 14 Oct
Write two aliases using filters and pipes.
Homework 3 assigned 30 Oct, due 11 Nov
Write a pair of shell scripts to backup files and retrieve previously saved backups.
Homework 4 assigned 20 Nov, due 2 Dec
Write a C or C++ program to print out the first lines of a bunch of files, specified on the command line.
Homework 5 assigned 25 Nov, due 9 Dec
Write a shell in C or C++.

Reading assignments

The Wang textbook

By Thursday, 13 Nov, you should have read chapters 1-8 and 10 of the Wang textbook, and a bunch of the following on-line documentation.

Example csh scripts

(Many people prefer to write their scripts in sh, even though they work interactively in csh. If you're curious about sh scripts, see this directory.)

Example C programs

in this directory

On-line documentation for library functions

On-line documentation for Unix commands

On-line documentation for programming tools

On-line documentation for Usenet

On-line documentation for the World Wide Web

If you're using a graphics workstation, you can use netscape and look at the various entries in its help menu. If you're using an ordinary character terminal, like the IBM's in our classroom, you can still wander the Web using lynx, you just won't get the pretty colored pictures, sounds, mouse controls, etc. You can learn about lynx at the address http://kufacts.cc.ukans.edu/lynx_help/lynx_help_main.html.

When you've seen a few Web pages and feel like writing one of your own, take a look at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/html-primer.html, the Beginner's Guide to HTML.


Last modified: Tue Nov 11 14:01:03 EST 1997
Stephen Bloch / sbloch@boethius.adelphi.edu