Window Geometry

The positions and size of the window of an X client is controlled by the -geometry switch.

The -- Flag

Imagine you need to create the file -o but observe the following.

Filenames and Spaces

Filenames with spaces proove to be a major pita because many code constructs do not properly handle them.

Colour Escapes

Colour escape sequences are useful for designing text user interfaces (TUI).

XFree Key Bindings

Modern keyboard offer so called multimedia keys which allow direct control over the browser or media player. But the keycodes which are generated by the individual keys are usually unknown to the system and, therefore, ignored.

Tar: Archiving Selected Files

Instead of letting tar recursively add files to the archive simply provide a file list on stdin.

Subversion over SSH

Subversion has a built-in protocol variant that automatically tunnels repository access through SSH to the specified host.

CVS over SSH

Instead of connecting to a pserver CVS can be tunnelled through SSH to protect the versioned data.

Tar: Remove Leading Directory Names

Here is an example how to archive files removing leading directory names.

nl: Number Lines

It is often useful to use line numbered code to document the stuff you implemented. So instead of manually adding them or writing YALNT (yet another line numbering tools) you better use nl.