Coding for Penetration Testers, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1

Introduction to command shell scripting

Abstract

In this chapter, we talk about shells, in the sense of the text-based interfaces we use to communicate with operating systems. UNIX, Linux, and OS X, as well as most UNIX-like operating systems, tend to work on the same general principles for purposes of shell scripting, and make use of many common programming concepts such as data structures, variables, control statements, if-then clauses, and while loops. In Microsoft operating systems, we can find many similar shell scripting tools as well. In Windows, we can carry out commands and write scripts using the generic shells command.com and CMD.exe, the PowerShell shell, and add-on tools such as Cygwin to give us access to bash on Windows, ...