Thinking Outside the Box: Leveraging "UNIX Tools" (GNU) for Data Analysis

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Life would be so much easier if everything was in a database or pulled via API. But that is not the case. All too often we get data files (or have to send them) in various formats. This session discusses some of the tools available to help you figure out what the file looks like so you can pull it apart using those tools or your tool-of-preference. While the GNU version of these tools will be the focus, the skills learned apply to many different platforms. Being available on so many platforms gives you lots of choices. Your choices include Microsoft’s Bash under Windows 10, Cygwin under many Microsoft Windows versions, MAC OSX, the Linux core of Android, commercial Linux — like Red Hat Enterprise, and commercial UNIX — like IBM’s AIX or Sun/Oracle’s Solaris. Of particular interest are ‘head’, ‘tail’, ‘wc’, ‘awk’, ‘dd conv’, and shells. A few of the differences between UNIX/Linux and Windows will also be discussed to ease your shifts in our heterogeneous environments. This knowledge also comes in handy if you need to migrate code from an existing UNIX/Linux-based application.