User:Rewood/The ABC'S of UNIX

A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and

B is for biff, which reads all your mail.

C is for cc, as hackers recall, while

D is for dd, the command that does all.

E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and

F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.

G is for grep, a clever detective, while

H is for halt, which may seem defective.

I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and

J is for join, which nobody uses.

K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while

L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.

M is for more, from which less was begot, and

N is for nice, which it really is not.

O is for od, which prints out things nice, while

P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.

Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and

R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.

S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while

T is for true, which does very little.

U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and

V is for vi, which is hard to abort.

W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while

X is, well, X, of dubious fame.

Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and

Z is for zcat, which handles compression.

-Submitted by Margaret Hudacko-