Buy Print Book:
$34.95 USD
Buy Print Book:
£24.95 GBP
Read this book online
at the Safari Bookshelf.
By Arnold Robbins, Nelson H.F. Beebe
First Edition May 2005
Pages: 558 (More details)
(Average of 2 Customer Reviews)
An essential skill for Unix users and system administrators, shell scripts let you easily crunch data and automate repetitive tasks, offering a way to quickly harness the full power of any Unix system. This book provides the tips, tricks, and organized knowledge you need to create excellent scripts, as well as warnings of the traps that can turn your best efforts into bad shell scripts.
Full Description
Register your book | View/Submit Errata | View/Submit Review | Examples
Browse within this book
Cover | Table of Contents | Index | Sample Chapter | Colophon
No time right now?
Email these links
Customers who bought this book also bought:
Wicked Cool Shell Scripts101 Scripts for Linux, Mac OS X, and UNIX Systems Read more |
Learning the bash ShellRead more |
Unix in a NutshellRead more |
Mastering Regular ExpressionsRead more |
sed & awkRead more |
No time right now?
Email these links
Customers interested in this book may also be interested in:
 Conference:O'Reilly Open Source Convention July 23-27, 2007 Portland, Oregon Read more |  Conference:Ubuntu Live July 22-24, 2007 Portland, Oregon Read more |  Course:Unix for Web Programming Learn the fundamentals of Linux/Unix and how to prepare a server for Web Programming using Apache. Read more |
 Article:What Is Vim (It's Easier than You Think) Read more | Course: Linux/Unix Sysadmin I Learn the basics of System Administration on your very own root server. Read more | Course: Learn C Programming These two courses will take you from newbie to advanced skills in open-source C programming. Read more |
Book details
Title:
Classic Shell Scripting
Subtitle: Hidden Commands that Unlock the Power of Unix
First Edition: May 2005
ISBN 10: 0-596-00595-4
ISBN 13: 9780596005955
Pages: 558
Average Customer Reviews: (Based on 2 Reviews)
Featured customer reviews
USALUG.org Review of "Classic Shell Scripting"
Rating:
2006-03-12 00:43:05
Crouse
[Reply | View]
USA Linux Users Group Book Review
Original review posted at: http://www.usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=77554 ()
Reviewer: Crouse
Book Review: Classic Shell Scripting
Authors: Arnold Robbins, Nelson H.F. Beebe
Publisher: O'reilly
First Edition May 2005
ISBN: 0-596-00595-4
560 pages, $34.95 US, $48.95 CA, £24.95 UK
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/shellsrptg/index.html ()
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/shellsrptg/errata/shellsrptg.confirmed ()
This book is designed for intermediate to advanced Linux users. The book states in the preface that before reading the book you should know some things about shell scripting already. This book isn't for those new to shell scripting. In my opinion, it kind of picks up where "Learning the Bash Shell" from O'reilly left off. It compliments that book pretty well. Each chapter builds on the concepts and materials covered in the chapter before, so it's a book that is best read front to back and not just used as a reference, you will get more from it that way.
The chapters titles show the progression of the book in what i considered to be a pretty good order. Chapter one and two start off with the basic history, and you quickly move to the next chapters which are the bulk of the book. They are as follows.
Chapter 3 Searching and Substitutions
Chapter 4 Text Processing Tools
Chapter 5 Pipelines can do Amazing Things
Chapter 6 Variables, Making Decisions, and Repeating Actions
Chapter 7 Input and Output, Files, and Command Evaluation
Chapter 8 Production Scripts
Chapter 9 Enough Awk to be Dangerous
Chapter 10 Working with Files
Chapter 11 Extended Example
Chapter 12 Spellchecking
Chapter 13 Processes
Chapter 14 Shell Portability Issues and Extentions
Chapter 15 Secure Shell Scripts
Worthy of noting are the a couple of the appendix titles.
Appendix A. Writing Manual Pages
Appendix B. Files and Filesystems.
Personally, I think these could just have easily been additional chapters in the book. The book makes nice use of examples and generally gives very detailed and descriptive explanations of those examples. The book does indeed build upon previous examples and chapters, making this a very easy to read book. I've found a lot of books simply assume that you have covered topic X somewhere already, and are much more suited for simple reference than they are actually reading. This book is useful as a reference, but it is very suited for reading as well. A lot of the commands that are used have a detailed explanation of them, plus caveats at the bottom, which is something many man pages don't include. I found those interesting as well. They provided insight into why some commands might not work as expected.
The chapters also contained a huge number of (Item / Description) type boxes for almost everything. An example would be for "Print Escape Sequences" from Chapter 7.
------------------------------------------
Sequence.................. Description
\a ............. Alert character, usually the ASCII BEL character.
\b .............. Backspace
\c ............. Suppress any final newline in the output.
........ and on down the list of escape sequences (about 8 more items in the list)
------------------------------------------
I realize that this may sound "trivial", but putting those tables of data actually IN the chapters made it much more enjoyable to read than some other books on the same subject. I was not forever having to flip to the appendix to view the data , that definitely works better "in context" right next to the examples and explanations of the subject matter.
All in all, I'd give this book a 8 out of 10 rating. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 10 is the few errors that have been found in the book. (see above link). I actually noticed a couple myself. Nothing earth shattering, but none the less, for that alone it couldn't earn a 10 out of 10 mark. The book is an excellent companion to "Learning the Bash Shell", and if you liked that book, you'll love this one. Again, this isn't for those new to shell scripting, but is a great intermediate book. This will be a book that will have a permanent home on my bookshelf looking like an old phonebook, tattered and used. Isn't that the best sign of a great book ?
Book Review: Classic Shell Scripting
Rating:
2005-09-09 11:10:38
Dan Clough
[Reply | View]
Classic Shell Scripting
Hidden Commands that Unlock the Power of Unix
By Arnold Robbins, Nelson H.F. Beebe
First Edition May 2005
ISBN: 0-596-00595-4
558 pages, $34.95
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/shellsrptg/
I found this to be quite a useful book for learning more about Unix/Linux shell scripting. I would consider this one to be an intermediate level text, and complete beginners might be better served by a more simplified book. There are quite a bit of in-depth details included, and many very nice examples and code snippets. Like all O’Reilly books, it is well organized and formatted, and clearly written.
The book opens with a brief history of Unix and how important the shell (and scripting) is to it. There are some comparisons with other programming languages, and why it is sometimes preferable to use a script versus a compiled program. The very basics of how scripts are written and used are also mentioned here, and beginners may want to refer to an additional book for more of the basic instructions.
The next few chapters cover mostly text processing with scripts, including searching, sorting, printing, extracting, and counting methods. Good examples are used, including the use of regular expressions and pipes to increase the power of your scripts. Following this, there are several chapters on more advanced scripting, including how to use variables, loops, functions, standard I/O, redirection, wildcards, using “awk”, and working with external files. Extensive example code is provided throughout.
The remaining chapters of the book get into more advanced subjects such as database manipulation, process control, and increasing the security of scripts. Portability and shells other than bash are also discussed.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the book (for me) were the Appendices and other sections at the end. Appendix A is entitled “Writing Manual Pages”, and is extremely informative on how to produce and format a valid man page. This is a much more complicated process than I had previously known (can you say “groff”?), and is quite interesting. For anyone who has ever complained about a poor man page, this will give you all the tools you need to write an improved version! J Appendix B has some excellent in-depth discussion about Unix files and filesystems, including attributes and permissions. Appendix C is a summary of important Unix commands for shell scripting, categorized by function, which is a good quick reference list. Following this, there is an excellent Bibliography that recommends related books for further reading. Finally, there is good Glossary and an Index.
Overall, I found the book to be excellent in it’s content and quality. I would recommend that a beginner also find a companion book to more gently introduce the fundamentals of shells and scripting, but this volume is excellent for the intermediate to advanced user. If you want to fully use the power of the Unix/Linux shell, this is a “must-have” book! Well done to the authors and O’Reilly Publishing.
Media reviews
"The authors provide a thorough explanation of how shell scripts can be used most effectively and be tuned to individual requirements. This is a valuable source of information about finding the right tool for any given task and how to put it to work."
-- Major Keary, PC Update
"Classic Shell Scripting sounds like one of those tomes that encourage narcolepsy in the bookstore, but that just shows we’re getting prejudiced in our old age. Instead, it’s a jazzy, practical and fascinating book that totally took us by surprise. Unlike most programming languages, shell scripts make extensive use of the built-in Unix commands--grep, tr, xargs, find, sort, and more must be mastered to make competent scripts. As a result, this book is really a hands-on guide to becoming a Unix guru. We can’t tell whether this was the original goal of the authors, but we don’t care because this is a masterpiece we refuse to part with. Failing a fourth edition of Unix Power Tools, this is as good as it gets. 10/10."
--Paul Hudson, Linux Format, July 2005
"Robbins and Beebe have produced a book that is really good in a variety of ways: it is well-written; it is well-organized; it is full of worthwhile examples and instances; and the code is lucid and clear... I've been using a number of flavors of Unix and Linux for more than 25 years. I learned a lot from this book... This is an excellent book. Buy it now!"
--Peter Salus, UnixReview.com, May 2005
"With the rise of languages like Java, with its cool widgets, someone unfamiliar with Unix might not realise that there is a type of programming proceeding quietly in the background. The shell scripting described by the book has been a mainstay of every Unix variant for years. The book shows how writing a short script can be used to handle a wide range of tasks. Enhanced by the simple syntax of most shells. Very easy to learn... The book's subject totally lacks any glamour. But a lot of actual work gets done in these scripts."
--Wes Boudeville, Amazon.com review, May 2005
