Reviewer: Germ
Website: http://www.usalug.org
The Book:
Learning the bash Shell
By Cameron Newham, Bill Rosenblatt
334 pages
2nd Edition January 1998
ISBN: 1-56592-347-2
Book Link: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bash2/
Code Examples: http://examples.oreilly.com/bash2/
If you are a user of Linux/Unix, sooner or later you will need to use the shell. The Free Software Foundation's "Bourne Again Shell" is the most widely used. Learning the bash Shell Second Edition by Cameron Newman and Bill Rosenblatt is nearly indispensible in order to gain a fantastic working knowledge of the bash shell. The book is geared towards bash 2.0, but is also relevant to bash 1.x.
This book is written for beginners and takes you from the basics all the way to system administration. Even the old pros are likely to learn a trick or two. It covers features of bash all the way to the "wow, I didn't know bash could do that!" level. People have come to expect well written, easy to read, and professional books from O'Reilly and this title is no exception.
Chapter 1 starts with the basics. You will gain knowledge of the directory and file structure, how to install bash as your login shell, and the basics of interactive shell use. The successive chapters will take you all the way to system administration. Each chapter of the book builds on what you have learned in Previous chapters.
Chapter 2 teaches you about command line editing. You can put bash in edit mode and edit command lines just as you would edit text with a text editor.
Chapter 3 tells you how to customize your environment. One of the more useful things to me are aliases. Do you use a lengthy command quite often? Create an alias for that command and give your fingers a rest. The authors tell you how.
Chapter 4 covers basic shell programming. You'll learn how to write and edit shell scripts.
The book continues with coverage of Flow Control, Command Line Options, Input/Output Processing, Process Handling, Debugging, Getting and Installing bash, and Administration. It finishes with some extremely useful appendices covering Related Shells, Reference Lists, Loadable Built-Ins, Systax, and Obtaining Sample Programs.
I am no guru, but I know my way around the CLI and one thing I found especially useful for me is Appendix B. It contains lists of options, built-in commands and variables, and I/O redirections among other commands.
The authors have provided tons of examples from commands to scripts and the major scripts are available for download from O'Reilly at the link above.
If you just want to be confortable using the command line interface or want to go all the way to a working knowledge of writing your own scripts and administering your system or a network, this is the book for you.
It's a must have for anyone using Linux/UNIX. I give Learning the bash Shell 5/5 Big Grins.
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