Francis reviewed the first edition of Unix Power Tools in C Vu 5.4.

This book is aimed at competent UNIX users and gives hints and tips on solving common real-world problems using standard UNIX tools. It also mentions other tools that can be installed from the enclosed CD-ROM.

Each chapter - covering topics such as shell programming, file management or command-line pipes - is divided into short articles that are meant to be browsed. To facilitate this, the whole book is comprehensively cross- referenced. Unfortunately the text isn't on the CD-ROM. This edition is thinner than the original and while many of the articles have been edited, there isn't much new material.

The CD-ROM includes the tools discussed in the book both as source and precompiled for many popular UNIX platforms, including Solaris and Linux. Although much of the code is freely available on the Internet, neither the book nor the CD-ROM explicitly states where to obtain the latest versions. The CD-ROM does not use the Rock-Ridge extensions and so is limited to 8.3 filenames and the automatic un-mangle/install program needs to be run from writable media - fortunately most competent UNIX users will be able to extract the files without using the installprogram.

Overall this is a worthwhile book for anyone using UNIX seriously, but it won't suit newcomers attempting to learn about UNIX for the first time.