WYNTK: UNIX System Admininistrator

Some single commands actually spawn multiple processes.

On UNIX systems, you can apply the output of one command as the input to another, without creating an intermediary temporary file. We say that the output of one program is piped through another program (sometimes called a filter).

For example, suppose I want to search for all users logged in today who stayed logged in overnight. The who command shows me user names and what day they logged in:

% who
tanya    console Oct 19 09:30
lmui     ttyp0   Oct 18 15:58 (opal:0.0)
sybase   ttyp1   Oct 18 16:01 (rock.west.ora.co)
mam      ttyp2   Oct 19 13:03 (ncd12.ora.com:0.)
val      ttyp4   Oct 12 18:22 (harry.ora.com:0.)
  ...

Today is October 19. I might save this output in a file and then use the -v option to the grep command to search for all lines that do not have “Oct 19.” So here’s one way I might do what I want using two commands and one temporary file:

% who > who.out
% grep -v "Oct 19" who.out
lmui     ttyp0   Oct 18 15:58 (opal:0.0)
sybase   ttyp1   Oct 18 16:01 (rock.west.ora.co)
val      ttyp4   Oct 12 18:22 (harry.ora.com:0.)
...

But I could also do this using one command and no temporary files, by just piping the output of who directly through the grep command.

% who | grep -v "Oct 19"
lmui     ttyp0   Oct 18 15:58 (opal:0.0)
sybase   ttyp1   Oct 18 16:01 (rock.west.ora.co)
val      ttyp4   Oct 12 18:22 (harry.ora.com:0.)
...

The advantage here is that it’s faster, and that it doesn’t require creating a temporary file that you then have to remove. However, it also means that you’re running ...