Acknowledgments (Learning the Korn Shell, 2nd Edition)

0.9. Acknowledgments

Writing a book from scratch isn't easy. Updating a book is even harder; the trick is to make it impossible (or at least difficult) for the reader to tell which author wrote what parts. I hope I've succeeded in that. I want to acknowledge Bill Rosenblatt for writing the first edition and giving me an excellent body of material with which to work. This is one of the best O'Reilly books I've ever read, and it was a pleasure to work with it.

I would like to thank (in alphabetical order) Nelson A. Beebe (University of Utah Mathematics department), Dr. David G. Korn (AT&T Research), Chet Ramey (maintainer of bash), Bill Rosenblatt (GiantSteps/Media Technology Strategies), and Dr. Eugene H. Spafford (Purdue University Computer Science department) for reviewing the book and providing many helpful comments. Mike Loukides, the book's editor, was very patient with me during several delays in the update. David Chu, of O'Reilly's editorial staff, did a great job making sure that many of the "nuts and bolts" parts of the project got done, for which I'm grateful.

David Korn, now of AT&T Research Laboratories, and author of the Korn shell, answered a number of questions and provided early access to ksh93l documentation, which helped considerably, as well as prerelease access to ksh93n. Glenn Fowler, also of AT&T Research, helped with compilation issues under GNU/Linux, as well as helping me understand a number of the finer points of ksh usage. Steve Alston provided some improvements to the kshdb debugger in Chapter 9. George Kraft IV provided helpful information on dtksh for Appendix A. Glenn Barry, of Sun Microsystems, provided information on zsh for Appendix A.

Thanks to Phil Hughes, president of SSC, for permission to reprint parts of their ksh reference card.

Several other staff members at O'Reilly contributed to the book, as well: Leanne Soylemez was the production editor and proofreader; Mary Brady and Jane Ellin provided additional quality control; Brenda Miller wrote the index.

Finally, thanks to my wonderful wife Miriam, for not demanding the attention she was entitled to on way too many nights while I worked on this book. Without her, nothing would be worth doing.


Arnold Robbins
Nof Ayalon
ISRAEL