View Review Details
| Book: | Learning the bash Shell | |
| Subject: | Good and Suggestions | |
| Date: | 2005-07-28 19:10:23 | |
| From: | linux learner | |
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Rating:
 
This book is a good introduction to the bash shell. It is well written and well-edited. As a serious hobbiest programmer of several languages, I was interested in getting deeper into the applications of the shell of Linux as an important aspect of learning the overall operating system and gaining the ability to write my own programs both at the GUI level and at the shell or terminal level. The shell presents a confusing array of arcane syntaxes and symbols that I found difficult to learn. This book helps sort that out. The shell also throws a group of terminal applications at tasks using the likes of sed, awk, and grep that totally confuse the neophyte. The book only slightly makes a dent in this aspect. One deficiency is the lack of online sample code that can be downloaded although some typing of your own is always helpful to learning. I went to the 2nd edition site and got what appears to be similar examples. I actually would like to see more examples and of a greater variety in the book. Some more advanced but still accessible scripts would be useful in the transition from simple code to real applications. Examples more on the line of the debugger code that is given. What do I mean? Well, how about an installation script for software the user might write including installation options and the use or alternative non-use of rpms. Some tips on shaping the environment and configuration for running your programs. How about some internet access via scripts that use wget perhaps in an automated manner for software updates (I know there are applications that do this already). How about extensive file copying and directory creation similar to moving things around with Conqueror or copying from cd's except from the shell. Obviously, this list goes on and on. The author spent an inordinate amount of time with pushd and popd but not one example using tar which is a bread and butter application. It is a good book that can still be improved. |
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