The ABC's of Unix A is for awk which runs like a snail, and B is for biff which reads all your mail. C is for cc as hackers recall, while D is for dd the command that does all. E is for emacs which rebinds your keys, and F is for fsck which rebuilds your trees. G is for grep a clever detective, while H is for halt which may seem defective. I is for indent which rarely amuses, and J is for join which nobody uses. K is for kill which makes you the boss, while L is for lex which is missing from DOS. M is for more from which less was begot, and N is for nice which it really is not. O is for od which prints out things nice, while P is for passwd which reads in strings twice. Q is for quota a Berkeley-type fable, and R is for ranlib for sorting ar table. S is for spell which attempts to belittle, while T is for true which does very little. U is for uniq which is used after sort, and V is for vi which is hard to abort. W is for whoami which tells you your name, while X is, well, X of dubious fame. Y is for yes which makes an impression, and Z is for zcat which handles compression.