M. D. McIlroy^(0/0)

Unix philosophy

A number of maxims have gained currency among the builders and users of the UNIX system to explain and promote its characteristic style: Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new “features.” Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats.…