UNIX : Where there is a shell, there's a way

Whether you talk about flat files, talk about system processes, talk about scheduling, talk about automation, at last you will end up praising UNIX knowingly unknowingly. Power of UNIX packed with different kinds of shell (bash, csh, ksh etc) is indispensable especially when you are trying to move the mountain inside your system by few lines of magic.

This ocean of features brings variety of uses under the same umbrella.

• Tired of writing the same command over again and again 

  Join multiple commands into one liner which could be a combination of lengthy repetitive command sequences . 
  yes, I chose to echo "Hi Abhishek|UNIX is FUN|Yes|No"|awk -F"|" '{print $1,$3,$2}' OFS="," to get Hi Abhishek,Yes, UNIX is FUN

• Build a generic process

  Generalize the sequence of operations done on one set of files having data, into a procedure which could be used for other similar types of data too. yes, may be passing as argument. 

• Actual command + Your command + Some more command = What you wanted
  

  Embrace the talent of pipes. Pipe multiple commands together into one to create various utilities. You would eventually end up inventing your own one liner.

• For someone Lazy enough, try aliasing
  

  Simple shell scripts or commands can be written as shell aliases, still this script can be made available to all users and all the processes. Bash users can add user-defined aliases to ~/.bashrc file

        Two of my favorite aliases , alias ..='cd ..'    alias c='clear'

• Build your own envioronment

  Enfold programs inside an environment that you can control. Best cases could be setting environment variables, switching to a special directory, creating a configuration file, redirecting output, creating logs, and then running a program. 
  
  

• Impromptu data for Data Scientists 

  Create customized datasets on the go, and invoke applications like  matlab, sas, idl, gnuplot to work upon them. Think of an ETL pipeline too.
   

• Hurrying to send into production

  You can build prototypes rapidly. Build a prototype, test on small input, again test output and scale it to production. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.

 Other Typical uses 

• Power on systems

  System boot scripts (/etc/init.d)

• Automate mundane tasks

  System administrators uses for automating various aspects of computer maintenance, user account creation , permissions, access, authority, monitoring etc.

• Want to send birthday emails exactly at 12 o'clock

  Create Application startup scripts, especially unattended applications which can scheduled. UNIX comes up with various inbuilt schedulers which on a priority basis gets your daily tasks done.  Don't forget to check  cron or at.
  

  
  
  Bottomline, Automate Automate Automate and Automate!