Some UNIX humor

Steve Simon

2007-03-22

The website www.netfunny.com has a lot of computer humor. Here’s one that caught my eye because I am taking a class in Bioinformatics and am learning a lot about UNIX.

MERRY CHRISTMAS
better !pout !cry   
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole >town
cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice    >giftlist
santa claus <north pole   >town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) { 
                     be good
                    }

I’ve included links to some Wikpedia entries that document the particular Unix features that this joke highlights. Wikipedia also has a list of common Unix commands.

You can find this joke on netfunny. Netfunny has a second fun Unix joke as well.

You can find an earlier version of this page on my old website.