Re: Beep?

[David Wright <d.wright@open.ac.uk>]

Quoting dkphoto (dkphoto@cyber-wire.com):
> I've lost track of how many Unix/Linux/???ix books I've bought now and 
> none of them seems to be very thorough. It seems every author assumes you 
> are using his/her particular flavor of Unix and don't need to know 
> anything at all about any of the others.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is to realise that
most of it is relevant to all unix-like systems (BTW "Unix"
capitalised is a proprietary name). If an author wants to give
examples of some concept, then typically they will employ their
own system, shell, etc. You just get used to seeing through all
that to the concept behind.

If you mean at the level of Debian installation and packages,
well, how does an author possibly keep up! OTOH at the level of
how unix-like OSes work internally, then you can't beat any
of the books by Richard Stevens. Look at the dates inside the cover
and you realise how mature and stable unix is.

> The one I am reading now says that the ^G command makes the system 
> 'beep.' It doesn't. How do I produce the system sound/beep/warning, 
> whatever you'd like to call it?

There is no "^G command". Many things make the system beep when
you type the "wrong" thing in. Typically, pressing up- or down-arrow
(bash shell, command recall) too many times will make the system beep,
but most of us have probably got a ~/.inputrc which avoids that
annoyance.

When the system prints ^G, the system also beeps, and this also
is intercepted. But how do you type in the ^G ? The easiest way
is to try typing the command
echo Control-V Control-G
where the Control-V quotes the next character, which you can now
see reflected as ^G.
If you type the above and then try again leaving out the Control-V,
you'll see that now the ^G doesn't reflect. You can confirm this
by using the command-recall to reexamine the input lines.

All this may be entirely different on the mac hardware I guess
you're using. Do macs have a beeper? Or do you have to drive the
speaker through some sort of sound device - I've no idea.

Cheers,

-- 
Email:  d.wright@open.ac.uk   Tel: +44 1908 653 739  Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail:  David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
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