Mastering UNIX® Shell Scripting: Bash, Bourne, and Korn Shell Scripting for Programmers, System Administrators, and UNIX Gurus, Second Edition

CHAPTER1

Scripting Quick Start and Review

We are going to start out by giving a targeted refresher course. The topics that follow are short explanations of techniques that we always have to search the book to find; here they are all together in one place. The explanations range from showing the fastest way to process a file line-by-line to the simple matter of case sensitivity of UNIX and shell scripts. This should not be considered a full and complete list of scripting topics, but it is a very good starting point and it does point out a sample of the topics covered in the book. For each topic listed in this chapter there is a very detailed explanation later in the book.

We urge everyone to study this entire book. Every chapter hits a different topic using a different approach. The book is written this way to emphasize that there is never only one technique to solve a challenge in UNIX. All the shell scripts in this book are real-world examples of how to solve a problem. Thumb through the chapters, and you can see that we tried to hit most of the common (and some uncommon!) tasks in UNIX. All the shell scripts have a good explanation of the thinking process, and we always start out with the correct command syntax for the shell script targeting a specific goal. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let's get started!

Case Sensitivity

UNIX is case sensitive. Because UNIX is case sensitive, our shell scripts are also case sensitive.

UNIX Special Characters