Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire_cat
See also
Through the Looking Glass - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass
Great books

oh, sorry, i did not know it was you! "beginning linux programming"? i have this book, but i did not read it! because i do not know where should i start.at the present, i only know some basic commands, and i do not know how the filesyetem of linux works? honestly, i am not very familiar with my linux system now.

i hope someday i can be a hacker,and have the skills that a true hacker should have. maybe something like programming languages, c, HTML,perl, etc. my major is not computer,so, i just heard about this names,and the point is i do not know where should i start? what is the first thing that i should learn? it is really confused me a lot!!!

thanks

With respect to the book, start at the beginning!!!

For the filessytem, I think there are some good documents at http://tldp.org

My best advice for you is to simply start doing things.....Poke around in your system, try different commands and programs---then go read a bit---then poke around some more. Also consider picking a language---eg Bash, C, Python---and simple diving in and learning it.

Be appreciative that you can learn at your leisure rather than having been thrown in the deep end like me. While I will learn much faster, I'm also feeling obligated to spend 95% of my waking hours on the systems that have fallen to me (and seem to be spending many more hours than usual awake).

thanks very much! have a nice day