Linux Shell Scripting with Bash

Chapter 2. Operating the Shell

One day my father was working on the electrical wiring on his pontoon boat. He worked for several hours without success. No matter what he tried, he couldn't get his running lights to work. Frustrated, he turned the light switch off… and the lights came on.

This chapter is a brief overview of how to use the shell in an interactive session at the Bash command prompt. Like my father and his wiring problem, understanding how commands work at the fundamental, interactive level is important before digging into the intricacies of scripts. That is, unless you like unexpected surprises.

Bash Keywords

A keyword is a word or symbol that has a special meaning to a computer language. The following symbols and words have special ...