Linux and the Unix Philosophy

This still leaves us with the question of where the valid source and destina

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tion file names come from. The answer is simple: from other small programs.

These other programs perform the functions of obtaining a file name, check

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ing whether the file exists, and determining whether it contains more than

zero bytes of data.

“Now wait a minute,” you may be thinking. Are we saying that Unix con

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tains programs that only check whether a file exists? In a word, yes. The

standard Unix distribution comes with hundreds of small commands and util

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ity programs that by themselves do little. Some, such as the test command,

perform apparently mundane functions