/dev/chat

2:53 AM

@slm this is very true. e.g. I recently (~5 days ago) bought Classic Shell Scripting, an O'Reilly book. that's the first book on real shell programming I've bought, despite having 2-3 yrs experience screwing with the shell.

the book is gonna be nice to fill in the gaps of my knowledge but it would have taken me a lot longer to become comfortable with the shell if I had started with a book.

@derobert yeah, I haven't read through your answer but I saw that question in the sidebar and it didn't really make sense to me

davidkennedy85

6:32 AM

HAI

@Gilles are you awake?

I suspect all the normal people are sleeping

Faheem Mitha

7:41 AM

@slm Ok.

@strugee Personally I don't find computer books all that useful, and I haven't bought one for a while.

For one thing, they date. For another, you can find all the information you need on the net. And you have to lug the things around with you if you move.

Faheem Mitha

8:08 AM

And speaking of scripting, the people on #bash on freenode are quite helpful, if you have questions.

terdon

10:55 AM

@FaheemMitha don't you want to accept this answer?

3

A: Removing the last n characters from every line in an emacs buffer

You can use the same replace-regex approach to remove as the append case, just prefix the end-of-line regex meta-character with an any-character meta-character: M-< M-x replace-regex RET .$ RET RET To replace multiple chars, you can, in a pedestrian fashion, start prepending .? (one optional a...

Faheem Mitha

11:57 AM

@terdon I expect I will. I usually wait 48 hours before doing so, though. I think SE recommends that somewhere.

terdon

@FaheemMitha OK, fair enough. I just thought you might have forgotten is all. I was about to send of my boilerplate "please accept this if it helped solve blah blalh" message and then saw it was you who knows the system well enough to not need help :)

Faheem Mitha

@terdon I kinda thought acceptances were not considered that important anyway, except possibly for the answerer to feel good, since the upvotes are more significant.

terdon

What gave you that idea? Accepting is important cause 1) it shows that the answer actually works and was what the OP was looking for so I can safely assume that it will solve my issue when I stumble upon the Q 2) Gives the answerer a deserved rep boost 3) Closes a question so it is marked as answered and helps both our stats and the organization of the site.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Ok. In any case, I do mark questions answered if they answer the question - of course, they don't always.

terdon

Of course. No, seriously, I only pinged you cause I know you. I often ask people to accept who are new to the site and figured that since you're often on chat I may as well remind you. Obviously, you should only accept if you feel that it answered your question.

Faheem Mitha

12:21 PM

Is the comment at the end of unix.stackexchange.com/q/37636/4671

added automatically, or did a person add it?

terdon

12:44 PM

@FaheemMitha must be automatic or maybe a mod (matdm had commented on that post) but I've never seen it before.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon I've seen that message occasionally before.

terdon

huh, perhaps @community then?

Faheem Mitha

Dunno. Possibly. Maybe a bot based on the length of replies. Maybe a staff member.

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