Learning the bash Shell, Second Edition

Chapter Summary

If you want to investigate specific topics rather than read the entire book through, here is a chapter-by-chapter summary:

Chapter 1, introduces bash and tells you how to install it as your login shell. Then it surveys the basics of interactive shell use, including overviews of the UNIX file and directory scheme, standard I/O, and background jobs.

Chapter 2, discusses the shell’s command history mechanism (including the emacs- and vi-editing modes), history substitution and the fc history command, and key bindings with readline and bind.

Chapter 3, covers ways to customize your shell environment without programming, by using the startup and environment files. Aliases, options, and shell variables are the customization techniques discussed.

Chapter 4, is an introduction to shell programming. It explains the basics of shell scripts and functions, and discusses several important “nuts-and-bolts” programming features: string manipulation operators, brace expansion, command-line arguments (positional parameters), and command substitution.

Chapter 5, continues the discussion of shell programming by describing command exit status, conditional expressions, and the shell’s flow-control structures: if, for, case, select, while, and until.

Chapter 6, goes into depth about positional parameters and command-line option processing, then discusses special types and properties of variables, integer arithmetic, and arrays.

Chapter 7, gives a detailed description of bash I/O. All ...