Lesson12.Input and Output

Lesson 12. Input and Output

In this lesson, you will learn how to manage Unix processes. We will cover input and output and how it relates to Unix.

We have learned a great deal about the Unix operating system itself. We have covered Unix tools that when opened and executed with commands become running processes (or daemons) on your Unix machine. In this lesson, we will cover the fundamentals of input and output and how it relates to Unix.

We have discussed the file system, as well as what processes are and how to manage them. We will now cover interprocess communication by input and output redirection and show you some of the underlying power Unix holds within. Unix is powerful and learning how to manage input and output (or I/O for short) is at the center of unleashing that power. Unix considers user input and program output back to the user as a stream. This is commonly referred to as a stream of information. This is how the concept of redirection is built. Redirection is when you specify to a program to send its part of the stream (output) to somewhere else other than the default (back to the user).

The purpose of this lesson is to introduce you to some features of I/O in an operating system, and how you can practice them to build your skills up. This 10-minute lesson is built to open your eyes to input and output management. However, it is up to you to dig deeper and learn more about it. A good source of information is the man pages.