This project aims to compile solutions for Flex Your Brain exercises appearing at the end of each chapter in the book UNIX Concepts and Applications - Fourth Edition, authored by Sumitabha Das.

The book is a recommended reading in many Computer Science, Computer Applications and Information Technology courses across universities in India. It is quite popular among students learning UNIX and GNU/Linux.

The questions in the exercise are slightly involved, and the solutions for the same are not made available. The project aims at creating a study aid for the students.

All the exercise questions are solved and tested on computers running:

• macOS Ventura version 13.0, a POSIX compliant UNIX operating system developed to run on Apple Mac computers.

• Ubuntu Desktop Linux version 22.10 Kinetic Kudu, a Debian based GNU/Linux distribution.

Both the computers are running version 5.2 of GNU Bash as the choice of shell.

All efforts have been made to ensure correctness and completeness of solutions while keeping the differences between the two platforms in mind. However, it is advised to refer to available documentation for the commands (using man/info pages or online help).

Conventions Used

1. Command, program name, key term:

   bold

2. Command-line and option(s) thereof, user input, expression, symbol:

   code span

3. Command output, script, source code:

   code block
   

4. File/folder name, path:

   "italicized inside double quote"

5. String:

   "double quote"

6. Domain name, email address, URL:

   italicized

Notes

• macOS Big Sur 11.0 and later versions are available for Intel and Apple Silicon Mac. Recent versions of Bash are compiled natively for both the architecture. All command-lines are tested on both Macs.

• Linux is not a replacement for UNIX. Ubuntu Linux is used as the choice of distribution due to its ease of use and mass adoption.