As part of the best selling Pocket Primer series, this book is an effort to give programmers sufficient knowledge of data cleaning to be able to work on their own projects. It is designed as a practical introduction to using flexible, powerful (and free) Unix / Linux shell commands to perform common data cleaning tasks. The book is packed with realistic examples and numerous commands that illustrate both the syntax and how the commands work together. Companion files with source code are available for downloading from the publisher. Features: - A practical introduction to using flexible, powerful (and free) Unix / Linux shell commands to perform common data cleaning tasks - Includes the concept of piping data between commands, regular expression substitution, and the sed and awk commands - Packed with realistic examples and numerous commands that illustrate both the syntax and how the commands work together - Assumes the reader has no prior experience, but the topic is covered comprehensively enough to teach a pro some new tricks - Includes companion files with all of the source code examples (download from the publisher).