As its title says, this book is a programmer’s reference manual for the utilities provided by the UNIX operating system to its users. Most of these utilities are presented very sketchily in the UNIX documentation. This book systematizes them, explains their use, and shows examples, which are undoubtedly useful for users of the UNIX operating system.

The book provides a comprehensive treatment of the utilities that offer services for file processing, program debugging, language implementation, system development, database management, text formatting, and data communications, as well as a writer’s workbench. The final section is dedicated to some applications, including the curses package, desk calculator tools, archiving files, maintaining libraries, and elementary statistics.