[blog...]

REVIEW

PACKT Publishing annonced a new Book: The Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook. That's exactly what I love with Linux. Writing shell scripts. I'm looking forward to review this book. It should be in my postbox soon.

Update 2011-03-30: The book has just arrived.

Update 2011-04-14: I just started with the first chapter. All chapters have funny names. The first one is called "Shell Something Out". I'm not sure if these titles helps you when looking at the table of content.

The first chapter shows you lots small examples with your shell. But it only describes the bash (Bourne Again Shell). There is no hint that bash is not used as default shell in ubuntu and debian anymore because it is huge, slow and has many "bashisms" - bash specific and not portable syntax.

But ok, I learned hacking with bash too and it is more feature-rich than dash and fast enough for most daily scripting.

There is another point missing: You learn using a bunch of tools: cat, date, tput, tee, tr, echo and more. But the author doesn't tell you howto get more information about each tool. There are man-pages, "--help" output and for sure lots of good websites online.

In the second chapter you learn very much about find. The author seems to love it. And he knows it very well. It's really interesting. Also sort, tr, uniq and other tools are presented with short examples. Most examples are a step-by-step guide.

I've still not finished with the book but I think it's not suitable for very beginners. But it is really helpful and interessting for people having written their first scripts already.