Linux Unleashed, Third Edition:GNU Project Utilities





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Calc
Calc is a desk calculator and mathematical tool that is used within GNU Emacs. Calc can be used as a basic calculator, but it provides additional features including choice of algebraic or Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), logarithmic functions, trigonometric and financial functions, complex numbers, vectors, matrices, dates, times, infinities, sets, algebraic simplification, differentiation, and integration.
GNU Chess
GNU Chess pits you against the computer in a full game of chess. It has regular-terminal, curses (a full-screen interface library for C), and X-terminal interfaces. GNU Chess implements many specialized features, including sophisticated heuristics that will challenge your best Bobby Fischer moves.
CLISP
CLISP is an implementation of Common Lisp, the list-processing language that is widely used in artificial-intelligence applications. CLISP includes an interpreter and a byte compiler and has user interfaces in English and German that can be chosen at compile time.
GNU Common Lisp
GNU Common Lisp (gcl) has a compiler and interpreter for Common Lisp. It is highly portable, extremely efficient, and has a source-level Lisp debugger for interpreted code. gcl also has profiling tools and an Xlib interface.
cpio
cpio is a program that copies file archives to and from tape or disk. It can also be used to copy files into a larger archive file or to other directories.
CVS
The Concurrent Version System (CVS) manages software revision and release control in a multideveloper, multidirectory, multigroup environment. It works in conjunction with RCS, another source code control program.

dc
dc is an RPN calculator that can be used interactively or with input files.
DejaGnu
DejaGnu is a framework for writing scripts to test any program. It includes the embeddable scripting language Tcl and its derivative expect, which runs scripts that can simulate user input.
Diffutils
The Diffutils package contains the file-comparison programs diff, diff3, sdiff, and cmp. GNU diff compares files showing line-by-line changes in several formats and is more efficient than its traditional version.
ecc
ecc is an error-correction checking program that uses the Reed-Solomon algorithm. It can correct a total of three byte errors in a block of 255 bytes and can detect more severe errors.
ed
ed is the standard line-based text editor.
Elib
This is a small library of Emacs Lisp functions, including routines for using doubly linked lists.
GNU Emacs
GNU Emacs is the second implementation of this highly popular editor developed by Richard Stallman. It integrates Lisp for writing extensions and provides an interface to X. In addition to its own powerful command set, Emacs has extensions that emulate other popular editors such as vi and EDT (DEC’s VMS editor). For more information on Emacs, refer to Chapter 16, “Text Editors: vi and emacs.”
GNU Emacs 19
Emacs 19 is a richer version of the Emacs editor with extensive support for the X window system. It includes an interface to the X resource manager, has X toolkit support, has good RCS support, and includes many updated libraries. Emacs 19 from the FSF works equally well on character-based terminals as it does under X.
es
es is a shell based on rc that has an exception system and supports functions that return values other than just numbers. It works well interactively or in scripts, particularly because its quoting rules are simpler than the C and Bourne shells.
Fileutils
Fileutils is a GNU collection of standard (and not-so-standard) Linux file utilities, including chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, dd, df, dir, du, install, ln, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, mknod, mv, mvdir, rm, rmdir, touch, and vdir.
find
find is a program that can be used both interactively and in shell scripts to find files given certain criteria and then execute operations (such as rm) on them. This program includes xargs, which applies a command to a list of files.
finger
finger displays information about one or more Linux users. GNU finger supports a single host that can act as the finger server host in sites that have multiple hosts. This host collects information about who is logged into other hosts at that site. Thus, a query to any machine at another site returns complete information about any user at that site. Here’s some sample output from a finger command:


# finger [e-mail]
Login: tparker Name: Tim Parker
Directory: /usr/tparker Shell: /bin/sh
On since Sat Jun 6 11:33 on tty02, idle 51 days 21:22 (messages off)
On since Sun Jun 7 15:42 on ttyp0, idle 0:02
On since Sat Jun 6 11:33 on ttyp1, idle 21 days 10:01
Mail last read Tue Jun 16 18:38:48 1998


As you can see, this version of finger (output differs a little depending on the operating system and version) shows the /etc/passwd details (login, comment line, home directory, and shell) as well as some session information.
flex
flex is a replacement for the lex scanner generator. The flex program generates more efficient scanners than does lex. The flex program also has the advantage that it generates C code. Scanners are used to identify tokens from input.
Fontutils
The Fontutils create fonts for use with Ghostscript or TeX. They also contain general conversion programs and other utilities. Some of the programs in Fontutils include bpltobzr, bzrto, charspace, fontconvert, gsrenderfont, imageto, imgrotate, limn, and xbfe.
gas
gas is the GNU assembler that converts assembly code into object files. Native assembly works for many systems, including Linux.



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