Mon Jun 5 05:04:44 AM UTC 2023

I recently became aware that RTC had an informal ebook lending library.
Basically if you have an ebook -- epub, pdf, etc -- you'd like to lend
you put a copy under '~/books' with the appropriate permissions[1].

The books are searchable via the shell but as not everyone is adept at
using command-line filter tools I made an AWK script for title searches:

 - - -
 $ ~zilog/public_bin/rtc_library -h

 list or search the RawText.Club ebook lending library

  usage:  rtc_library [-?|-h|--help|<keyword>]

  ex: rtc_library |less   => returns ALL titles, paged
      rtc_library cat[te] => matches 'Catton' & 'educate'
                             but NOT 'cat' or 'Cathy'

  note: regex okay; search is not case-sensitive
 - - -

Some search examples:

 # find any title containing "moby", "crime", or "henry":
 $ ~zilog/public_bin/rtc_library moby\|crime\|henry
 /home/r1k/books/fyodor-dostoevsky_crime-and-punishment_constance-garnett.epub
 /home/xiu/books/jl-peridot--about-henry-a-novella.epub
 /home/sloum/books/herman-melville_moby-dick.epub

 # find any title containing "ram" or "rim":
 $ ~zilog/public_bin/rtc_library r[ai]m
 /home/mryouse/books/dostoyevsky-brothers-karamazov.epub
 /home/r1k/books/fyodor-dostoevsky_crime-and-punishment_constance-garnett.epub
 /home/mieum/books/Essays_in_Experimental_Logic.epub

It's not necessary to use quotes around the search terms but it doesn't
hurt and may be easier than escaping meta characters like '?' and '|'.

 --
 [1] suggested permissions:
    - the ~/books directory:   drwxr-xr-x  or  755
    - the books themselves:    -rw-r--r--  or  644

  the chmod(1) tool can modify file/dir permissions:
    
  $ mkdir ~/books ;chmod 755 ~/books  # create ~/books & make readable for all
  $ chmod 644 ~/books/fubar.pdf       # make fubar.pdf readable for all