Hacks are tools, tips, and tricks that help users solve problems. They are aimed at intermediate-level power users and scripters. Each book is a collection of 100 article-length hacks, and each one provides detailed examples that show how to solve practical problems. Each hack should explain in sufficient detail some job to do, whether it is covering a useful task, or providing an example. Hacks should focus on the solution or the application, and not attempt to cover basic material that is already available in the documentation.

Each Hacks book opens with an introduction that can provide a summary of what users are expected to know and perhaps suggest a grouping of hacks that may be of interest. The introduction should encourage the user to become a hacker by using and modifying the scripts and/or tools in the book. If essential, provide background information (such as documentation) at the beginning of a chapter (or if it is reference material, possibly in an appendix).

What Is a Hack?

We are using the term "hack" to mean a clever solution or workaround that solves a practical problem. Hacks are industrial-strength, real-world-tested solutions. Often a hack is making two different things work together, and the documentation doesn't tell you how to do that. Hacks should be non-obvious. (Though what's obvious to one person may not be so to another.) They are not simple procedures such as changing a setting or editing a configuration file. A hack is not a matter of knowing which menu item to select. If you can find it in the standard documentation, then it's not a hack.

Why is O'Reilly publishing its new Hacks Series? Editor Rael Dornfest says that bringing the hacker ethic, the air of enthusiastic participation, to the consumer is what the Hacks Series is all about. Read more.

The tone of the hack should be conversational and somewhat informal, as though the hack were being passed on from one person to another. Good technical magazine articles (online or in print) usually have the right tone. Get under the hood and explain how something works so someone else can tinker with it and change it. The detail provided with each hack should be adequate enough for users to learn something and know how the key part of the script works, but they shouldn't have to go through it line by line. We would expect users to modify the scripts, and a hacking-the-hack subsection tells users how to customize the script to produce different results.

Hacks should target intermediate-level users. Said another way, hacks are written by advanced users to share their knowledge with reasonably intelligent intermediate-level users. Assume the reader has the background to understand key concepts. Don't waste time going over basic things. If needed, reference other sources, such as O'Reilly books or online documentation for additional background information.