Hello, mike

Since the book is about Plan 9, I suppose it is an appropriate place to ask the 
questions

Regarding issue 1, the du program uses Tab-seperated entries. Therefore, 's/.* 
//' should be 's/.*      //' (as in with a tab). This solves the issue, even 
though both characters may appear identical on the screen which makes it a bit 
tricky

Regarding issue 2, these 2 sentences talk about the difference between rc 
functions and rc files. Specifically, if you have a useful program you would 
like to execute in an rc shell, it is advised to make it a file rather than a 
function because A. You can edit the file much easier to suit your growing 
needs and B. Functions are only visible within 1 shell session, whereas files 
are visible in every rc window. This is the first sentence. The second sentence 
says that functions are useful for modular scripts - that is you can define an 
action consisting of multiple steps in a function and call this function a 
module. A script may then choose to execute one or a few modules which is more 
convenient than using commands seperately and sometimes makes more sense than 
different files due to the shortage of the commands. Distinguishing between 
when to use a shell function and a shell file is a valuable skill

Hope this finds you well, 
Plat
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