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UNIX® Shells by Example, Third Edition
book

UNIX® Shells by Example, Third Edition

by Ellie Quigley
October 2001
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
1040 pages
22h 50m
English
Pearson
Content preview from UNIX® Shells by Example, Third Edition

12.7. Functions

Functions were introduced to the Bourne shell in AT&T's UNIX SystemVR2 and have been enhanced in the Bourne Again shell. A function is a name for a command or group of commands. Functions are used to modularize your program and make it more efficient. They are executed in context of the current shell. In other words, a child process is not spawned as it is when running an executable program such as ls. You may even store functions in another file and load them into your script when you are ready to use them.

Here is a review of some of the important rules about using functions.

  1. The shell determines whether you are using an alias, a function, a built-in command, or an executable program (or script) found on the disk. It looks for ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 013066538XPurchase book