Basic Unix Commands
Special Filesystems
Filename Wildcards (Globbing)
Default Account Configuration
Reading Mail
Hacking Your X Environment on an SGI

Filename Wildcards (Globbing)

Unix filename wildcarding is done by the command interpreter (the shell) by rewriting the command line with all wildcards expanded (globbed) before the command is executed.

It is important to know that this process, known as either "globbing" or "wildcard expansion", is implemented differently in different shells. Specifically, the inverse-character-set wildcard is not implemented in the older shells. Also, the precise replacement for wildcards with no matches varies from nothing (in bash) to leaving the unexpanded wildcard in the final command (in sh), to signalling an error (in csh).

By default, almost all shells only include dotfiles (files whose names begin with a period) if a wildcard explicitly includes the initial dot, which incidentally prevents it from matching non-dotfiles. Hence, although running a command "foo" on all files in a given directory in DOS might be:

foo *.*

foo .* *

?

*

[abcd]

[a-d]

[^0-9]

Default Account Configuration

• New accounts use the bash(1) and in most cases have symbolic links (detailed below) to generic configuration files which are not writable to the user.
• The default umask is 022.
• All mail should be accessed via secure connections such as IMAPS (IMAP + SSL).
• Several aliases are provided, and the dotfiles auto-config the search path and environment to whichever major software packages are found on the system.

User modifications, aliases, and variable overrides should be placed in the home directory, in a file named ".bashrc.mine", which will be read in at the end of ".bashrc" processing.

Reading Mail

The (currently) recommended way to read mail under Unix is to use the IMAP protocol through any supporting mail client, including the mail client built into browser such as mozilla, and netscape.

MH, in particular, has a wide variety of interfaces including xmh under X11, and M-x mh-rmail under Emacs.

How to send MIME mail in mh:

1. Compose a letter using comp.
2. When you get to a point where you want to include a MIME attachment, use the following form to include a GIF image (note: the '#' must be in the first column):
   
   #image/gif [Pictures at an Exhibition] /usr/lib/pictures/exhibition.gif
   
   
3. Finish your letter, adding more text or attachments as needed.
4. Save your letter and exit the editor. At the Whatnow prompt type "edit mhn". mhn will automatically format your letter with the MIME attachments leaving the original letter in ,##,orig where ## is the letter number.
5. Type "send" at the Whatnow prompt, and poof, you have just sent MIME mail. I strongly recommend you practice sending yourself MIME mail first.

In a non-graphic environment, such as most likely see when telnetting to a computer or otherwise remotely logged in, text-only methods of reading mail may be used. One can use emacs, mh, pine, the traditional Berkeley Mail (notice the capital "M"), or zmail (if installed) with the -tty option.

Mail can be read inside of the editor emacs in several ways. See the exhaustive internal help of this editor for detailed information, only the initial commands of each of the two most common approaches are listed here, specifically:

M-x rm
M-x load-library (hit return) mh-e (hit return) mh-rm

There is also a Mail filtering FAQ.