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Full Discussion: question from a dummy
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers question from a dummy Post 302086813 by blowtorch on Sunday 27th of August 2006 09:52:20 PM
Old 08-27-2006
Your question is answered here. Infact, read the entire book: The Art of Unix Programming.

Here's the excerpt that answers your question, by the way:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug McIlroy
(i) Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

(ii) Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don't clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don't insist on interactive input.

(iii) Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don't hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.

(iv) Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you've finished using them.

He later summarized it this way (quoted in A Quarter Century of Unix [Salus]):

This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
If you want to know who Doug McIlroy is, well, he was the guy who 'invented' unix pipes... though Ken Thompson actually put them in the kernel.
 

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URLCODING(3)						 libbash urlcoding Library Manual					      URLCODING(3)

NAME
urlcoding -- a Libbash library for encoding and decoding URL's. SYNOPSIS
urlEncodeString [-l] <STRING> urlEncodeFile [-l] <FILE> urlEncodeStream [-l] urlDecodeString <STRING> urlDecodeFile <FILENAME> urlDecodeStream DESCRIPTION
urlcoding is a collection of functions that convert ASCII-text to standard URL's and vice-versa. The AWK code used is based on code by Heiner Steven <heiner.steven@odn.de> The function list: urlEncodeString Creates a URL from an ASCII string urlEncodeFile Converts a file into URL-valid text urlEncodeStream Converts standard input into URL-valid text urlDecodeString Converts a URL-encoded text back to a plain-text form urlDecodeFile Coverts URL-encoded text in a file back to plain text urlDecodeStream Converts URL-encoded standard input to text Detailed interface description follows. The [-l] option for the encoding functions should be used when line-feed characters (' ') are to be encoded as well. All functions print the results of their conversions to standard output. The exit status of all functions is that of the command 'awk', with '0' for success FUNCTIONS DESCRIPTIONS
urlEncodeString [-l] <STRING> Converts STRING - a string of ASCII characters - to URL. urlEncodeFile [-l] <FILE> Coverts FILE of URL-encoded text to plain text urlEncodeStream [-l] Converts text from standard input to URL-text. urlDecodeString <STRING> Converts URL-encoded string STRING back to text. urlDecodeFile <FILENAME> Converts the URL-encoded text in FILE to plain text. urlDecodeStream Converts the URL-encoded text from standard input to plain-text AUTHORS
Alon Keren <alon.keren@gmail.com> SEE ALSO
ldbash(1), libbash(1) Linux Epoch Linux
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