How to run a command line tool?

In article <blrdun$oru$1@sparta.btinternet.com>,
Laura <nospam_lbassett DeleteThis @bigfoot.com> wrote:


> A few of the Apple code examples build command line tools rather than
> proper apps. How do you 'run' these apps? I'm not talking about
> specific usage for any particular one, but just generally?

Run 'Terminal', which you'll find in the /Applications/Utilities folder.
Type in a command and it'll run that command.

You may want to pick up the book "Learning Unix for Mac OS X", or
something similar. It should teach you how to use command line tools on
Mac OS X.

Laura wrote:

>A few of the Apple code examples build command line tools rather than
>proper apps. How do you 'run' these apps?

The Terminal application will get you to a shell prompt;
it's under /Applications/Utilities. It's the third entry on my dock.

Use an editor to customize your shell "rc" file ("rc" == "run command" from
ages ago). In System Preferences under Users you can change your login
shell (or was that in NetInfo???). I set mine to 'bash' since I used it on Linux
for many years, and it's close enough to 'ksh' on the commercial systems.
Whichever shell you use, read up about it in it's man page: "man bash"
for example. Here's part of my '.bashrc' file:

======
export PATH=${PATH}/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/Developer/Tools

# shell prompt with current directory in reverse/bold
# [\u@\h \W]\$
SS=`tput smso;tput bold`
SE=`tput rmso`
export PS1="\[${SS}\] \W \[${SE}\] \$ "
unset SS SE

alias l="/bin/ls -CF"
alias er="tput clear"
alias ldd="otool -L"
======

The PATH looks weird because the default path ends with our HOME,
but I keep my own commands in my 'bin' directory. (And, "Look, ma! No dots!")

Lucent has some PDF/PS re-creations of the V7 documents at
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/

Grab the PDF files of Volumes 2A and 2B and read some of the original
papers from the guys who started it all:

vol2/beginners - tutorial
vol2/shell - the command interpreter
vol2/cacm - Original CACM paper on Unix
vol2/implement - implementation of system

The book 'UNIX Programming Environment' by Kernighan/Pike is a solid
intro into scripting and program development on UNIX, including a touch
of lex and yacc and (gasp!) documentation!

The other books by the Bell Labs guys are also great:
AWK Programming Language
The Practice of Programming
No fluff, just good examples and direct writing.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/index.html
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/books.html

Can you tell I like UNIX? I have, ever since '78!
Good luck in your explorations!

Thanks for all the help.
As to the original enquiry, I was lacking the "./".
(Amazing how many web OSX-Unix guides I've read that don't mention it.)