Learning the bash Shell: Unix Shell Programming

It feels so anachronistic to be learning the bash shell in 2009, but I want to broaden my understanding of Linux and bash is a component part. For the beginner, like myself, this is an easy introduction. It begins with the purpose and nature of the shell, moves you into basic concepts of using the shell and then takes you into the more complex area of shell programming. Unlike a number of "Learning" books from O'Reilly, this one is very well written for its target audience, which is beginners. The approach is gradual, in small chunks, with lots of explanation. This is not a reference or tutorial for Linux, per se. It is about the bash shell and the Linux commands encountered are incidental to that goal. (The book, actually, is a survivor of the UNIX era.) Because of the author's approach, picking up knowledge of the fundamentals of the bash shell is (thankfully) a quick process. The more advanced lessons on scripting are somewhat lost on me because I don't operate in a server environment and, as a result, don't have a real world context for some of the examples. Some of the chapter exercises, however, are quite challenging and will keep me busy for a while. I am learning Linux and bash out of personal curiosity, so I don't know how much of this newly acquired knowledge I will use on anything resembling a regular basis, but the cool thing is that the book is obviously useful as a reference for those like me who will probably stay close to the beginner level. Overall, a very nice way to learn the bash shell.Jerry

I'm teaching a class at my office (I have over 45 years experience with Unix, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, AIX, etc.) for technical folks and programmers who are migrating from a Windows environment to a Linux (RHEL6) enviroinment. In previous sessions of a class like this but on other OS's (Solaris and HP-UX primarily) I had concentrated on the Korn shell (which I still like); but for this class I decided to emphasize Bash instead as it's the defacto standard on Linux (and has features that some other shells are lacking).My company asked me to recommend a book for the people taking this course would find useful, so I began looking for a book to use to go along with the sessions on Awk. (My initial plan had been to give them the URLs for on-line materials, and I'm still doing that).I selected this book to use as the reference (i.e, the one the people taking the class will buy) as after scanning through not just it but several other books it seemed to be the best one to recommend both as the basis for what I was teaching as well as other areas of shell programming which I will summarize but not go into extensively.IMHO the students shoud find this book to be very useful as a printed reference long after the course is over.

The bash shell is now the most common and featureful command shell in the Unix world. It's full capability certainly isn't obvious to a beginner facing a command prompt, but is well worth exploring. This book is a great place for the novice to start. The first chapter addresses the most fundamental question: just what is a command shell?The ideal reader already knows at least the names of the emacs and vi editors. That much helps understand the many features and two distinct feature sets available for command line editing. I consider fancy command line editing over-rated for fluent typists, but it's there in the second chapter for all who want it and anyone can benefit from at least a little knowledge of it. After that successive chapters pull the reader deeper into the bash feature set: aliases and shell variables, scripting and shell programming, and debugging when the shell programs or functions go awry.Since this book is aimed at the novice, Newham and Rosenblatt skip lightly over a few of the more advanced subjects. For example, exceptions and trap handling get only cursory treatment, since they get into deep weirdness very fast. The authors are honest about this shallow treatment, though, and give enough information for a novice to recognize the basics and look them up in more advanced references.This is nicely organized for the self-taught student. As a result, it's not laid out as a programmer's reference manual - anyone who wants that kind of reference just isn't looking at the right book. For its intended reader, though, it's a great book. It gets readers off to a fast start, and lets them decide just how much they want to bite off at a time. I recommned it very highly.//wiredweird

Look, I've been in technology over 24 years. Every time I run across something that makes me scratch my head, I look for a resource. Youtube, Online forums, E sites- they all have their places.Sometimes you just want a stead-fast resource you can reference and something you can take with you. Sometimes you just need to learn enough to get through your blockers, and sometimes you need to become an expert. I've never found an instance in my career where O'Reilly doesn't do exactly these things.Bash, Snort, Networking, etc. Buy them.

Every serious Bash user should read through this at least once. Being a physical object, once you have read through it once (even years ago) it provides a quicker abstract reference for those moments you need to look up a feature you don't know the name of or have a hard time explaining. Great book. Just the right balance of depth, feature history, reason-for-being and examples.

This book does what it sets out to do. Help you learn Bash shell programming.

I have been working on Linux for a while and with limited knowledge of the basis of Bash Shell, it is always chattered info about the bash as I need.This is a great book covers the basics and brief intro for beginners.It will be great if the user had already familiar with CLI.Recommend to any new *nix Users!

Good reference and introduction to scripting.Covers all topics to move on to more competent books.

Pues eso, que si trabajas en administración de sistemas Linux deberías tenerlo en tu mesilla por las noches...

good explanations and well written

This is a very well written book that introduces in a logical order all the concepts to write good shell scripts. Highly recommended.

Happy