O'Reilly's bestselling book on Linux's bash shell is at it again. Now that Linux is an established player both as a server and on the desktop "Learning the bash Shell" has been updated and refreshed to account for all the latest changes. Indeed, this third edition serves as the most valuable guide yet to the bash shell.
As any good programmer knows, the first thing users of the Linux operating system come face to face with is the shell the UNIX term for a user interface to the system. In other words, it's what lets you communicate with the computer via the keyboard and display. Mastering the bash shell might sound fairly simple but it isn't. In truth, there are many complexities that need careful explanation, which is just what "Learning the bash Shell" provides.
If you are new to shell programming, the book provides an great introduction, covering everything from the most basic to the most advanced features. And if you've been writing shell scripts for years, it offers a great way to find out what the new shell offers. "Learning the bash Shell" is also full of practical examples of shell commands and programs that will make everyday use of Linux that much easier. With this book, programmers will learn:
How to install bash as your login shell
The basics of interactive shell use, including UNIX file and directory structures, standard I/O, and background jobs
Command line editing, history substitution, and key bindings
How to customize your shell environment without programming
The nuts and bolts of basic shell programming, flow control structures, command-line options and typed variables
Process handling, from job control to processes, coroutines andsubshells
Debugging techniques, such as trace and verbose modes
Techniques for implementing system-wide shell customization and features related to system security
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Learning the bash Shell, 2nd Edition (Paperback)
This O'Reilly Publication does a good job in filling a void for a good introduction to Bash Shell scripting. Bash has become the shell script programming choice for most Unix and Linux shell programmers, because of its strengths over C shell (Csh) and other Unix-based Shell environments as a fairly robust freeware script programming language. Strengths of the publication are the clear explanations of the bash shell programming environment, the effective use of tables to summarize basic shell language and programming constructs, UNIX-based utilities, shell environment customization, shell Syntax, Bash File Operators and control key definitions. A chapter is devoted to edit mode capabilities (both eMacs and Vi Command-Line Editing Commands are covered and summarized effectively in clearly doucmented tables). The book contains a number of terse script programming tasks, which provide clear examples of the material presented in the text. These program examples are reworked to provide a clear example of how Bash scripts can be modified to provide greater flexibility and reusability of Bash shell program code. I would like to see more robust programming shell examples in the book as examples of mini-applications, which Bash is frequently used for in many Unix-based or Unix-derived platforms. The "Task 5-1" program example is an example where a good example of a program, which does an adequate job of clearly covering the use of Bash File Operators, yet the author(s) make the statement that the code is "relatively long winded". Another area the book could address is the use of Bash in a Windows environment. I was able to port some of the programming tasks presented to a Windows 95/98 environment using the GNU Bash Version 2.03 for Windows package available on the internet. Despite these drawbacks, I rate the book four stars on the strengths that it is the only readily-available publication, which is solely devoted to Bash shell use and programming. The O'Reilly publication is definitely worth the investment, if you are looking for a book to get you started on Bash Shell Script programming on a Unix, Linux or Windows (to a limited degree) environment.
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