Command Line Fundamentals

4

Shell Scripting

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Use looping and conditional constructs in the shell
• Use shell functions
• Perform line-oriented processing using the shell language
• Write shell scripts
• Automate data processing tasks with scripts

This chapter explains advanced scripting features such as conditionals and loops, and also describes how to write shell scripts.

Introduction

In the previous chapters, we learned most of the shell constructs and syntax that are used with the interactive command line. We also built a vocabulary of useful commands and learned how to combine them. In this final chapter, we will learn a few more shell constructs and commands, all of which when combined, will let ...