Open License Computer Books

This guide discusses concepts useful in the daily life of the serious Bash user.

While a basic knowledge of shell usage is required, it starts with a discussion of shell building blocks and common practices.

Then it presents the grep, awk and sed tools that will later be used to create more interesting examples. The second half of the course is about shell constructs such as loops, conditional tests, functions and traps, and a number of ways to make interactive scripts.

All chapters come with examples and exercises that will help you become familiar with the theory.

This tutorial assumes no previous knowledge of scripting or programming, but progresses rapidly toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction . . . all the while sneaking in little snippets of UNIX® wisdom and lore. It serves as a textbook, a manual for self-study, and a reference and source of knowledge on shell scripting techniques. The exercises and heavily-commented examples invite active reader participation, under the premise that the only way to really learn scripting is to write scripts.