16 Mar 26

Guide on using POSIX raw mode and what all the different flags do.

This is technically part of a series on how to make a text editor, but it’s very useful on its own.


21 Jun 23

This article explains how to correctly handle filenames in Bourne shells (the primary shell of Unix/Linux/POSIX systems), based on the issues discussed in ‘Fixing Unix/Linux/Filenames’. Many programs fail to work properly on filenames that include spaces, begin with dash (-), include newlines, and so on, because developers don’t know how to do it properly. Many texts, even good ones, get this wrong.


12 Apr 21

An investigation on the reasoning behind the x-hack idiom in shells, and whether it’s still relevant today.

by mlb Apr 2021 saved 2 times