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2. Resources

There are many good books for learning how to use Unix systems, and they all seem to come from the same publisher - O'Reilly. I recommend the following books:

Learning the bash Shell, ISBN 1-56592-347-2

This is an excellent book for learning how to use the bash shell and programming with it.

Unix Power Tools, ISBN 1-56592-260-3

This is an excellent book for a general overview of Unix, followed by almost a thousand pages of tricks, tips, and scripts. Except for the Unix introduction chapters, this book is meant to be browsed when one is curious to see if there is a better way of getting the job done.

Programming in Perl, ISBN 1-56592-149-6

The canonical book on Perl by Larry Wall, the originator of the Perl language. It is usually sufficient to read just the first chapter, skip the second chapter, and skim the third in order to start scripting in Perl. Most Perl programmers learn by looking at example scripts and solving their own problems.

In addition, the first chapter of the "SAS Companion for UNIX Environments: Language" is a good 10-page introduction to common Unix commands. If you are a SAS user who doesn't want to learn a lot of Unix, this guide should be sufficient to get your work done, although probably not in the most efficient manner. Take a course or read another book if you want to really take advantage of Unix.

And last, but not least, read the Unix online manual. The command is man(1). Type man intro and man man to learn how to use the manual. Throughout this text you will see Unix commands written with a number in parentheses beside them, like so: bash(1). The number refers to the section of the online manual where one can find a description of the command. This is one of the traditional ways of writing about Unix commands. To use the command, one does not type the manual section number.

If you are interested in MVS, TSO, JCL, or SAS, this is a good source of links:

http://www.albany.edu/sph/data_resources.html

A good introduction to the TSO + ISPF environment can be found at:

http://www.uga.edu/~ucns/hostsys/mvs/tso-user-guidec.html

If you have never used JCL before and find yourself getting lost in the jargon, you might want to look at this introduction to JCL:

http://www.okstate.edu/cis_info/cis_manual/jcl_toc.html

Warning: I have come across several versions of JCL (Job Control Language) and JES (Job Entry Subsystem) described online. What you read on the Internet might not apply to your system.

I found "The Little SAS Book" ISBN 1-55544-215-3 by Delwiche and Slaughter to be an adequate introduction to SAS.


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