Shell Scripting: Expert Recipes for Linux, Bash, and More

How This Book Is Structured

This book is in four parts; the first part covers the fundamental features and syntax of the shell; the second part looks at the tools available that a shell script can make use of; and the third part has recipes covering a fairly broad range of topics. Finally, the fourth part contains reference information.

Part One is the longest of the four sections; it looks at variables, wildcards, conditional execution, loops, functions, arrays, and processes. The theory is presented with lots of practical examples to demonstrate what is being covered. A lot of these scripts are fairly simplistic because they are concentrating on only one aspect of the shell.

Part Two covers the tools external to the shell that make shell scripts more useful; these are broken down into three chapters on text, files, and general systems administration. The examples in Part Two are a bit more real-world in their nature, and a bit longer and more complex than those in Part One.

Part Three is a set of shell scripting recipes. The hope is that you will find these recipes useful in their own right, but they have also been selected for their usefulness in demonstrating the topics covered in the first two parts of the book. They also show numerous different approaches and techniques that can be used in real-life shell scripts. The real and practical issues are dealt with in this part of the book, without making concessions to explain one specific point. These scripts do what is necessary ...