The Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide - A Review

The Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide - A Review

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this ebook in exchange for a review.

The "Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide" by Daniel J. Barrett (published by O'Reilly Media) is a handy quick-reference for leveraging the power of the terminal to use your Mac more efficiently. This book is especially helpful for guiding you through the use of commands that are built-in with your Mac, which may vary from other Unix-like distributions that you may be more familiar with (such as Linux.)

As is typical for an O'Reilly Pocket Guide, the book is pretty terse, and it is not all-inclusive.  It does briefly describe each command that it covers, but most entries are between a couple of paragraphs and a couple of pages. It varies depending on the complexity of each command, but most commands include a small bit of descriptive text (typically 1-3 paragraphs), a handful of the most-common options, and some examples.  Typical use-cases are covered, but due to space constraints, they really are limited to the most common options; A book this size could probably be taken up solely by covering the options for `ssh`, `grep`, `tar`, and `ls`.  (In fact, there is a Definitive Guide for SSH, and a Pocket Reference for `grep`.)

This book is not set up to be a friendly introduction to those who are completely new to the Terminal. However, if you are comfortable with the terminal and could use a handy quick-reference, this is a fine tool to work more efficiently with your Mac.

The book can be purchased here.

-Waldo