Because some people just need to get around in a shell, not obtain an unofficial doctoral on it.
Here, let me quote from the first couple paragraphs of the first page of the book:
I wrote this book really quickly as a way to bootstrap students for my other
books. Many students don't know how to use the basics of the command line
interface, and it was getting in the way of their learning.
This book is designed to be something they can complete in about a day to a
week and then get enough skill at the command line to graduate to other books.
This book isn't a book about master wizardry system administration. It's just
a quick introduction to get newbies going.
That said, I always like to see a brief introduction to commands like cut and awk, as they are tremendously helpful for pulling stuff out of text data files and they kind of show off the (simple) power of shell. But I've read the first paragraph of the first page of the book and know that wasn't Zed's goal here.
Here, let me quote from the first couple paragraphs of the first page of the book:
That said, I always like to see a brief introduction to commands like cut and awk, as they are tremendously helpful for pulling stuff out of text data files and they kind of show off the (simple) power of shell. But I've read the first paragraph of the first page of the book and know that wasn't Zed's goal here.