Linux & Unix Shell Programming

Reviewer: A reader from Modesto, CA United States This is a marvellous book on Unix/Linux shell programming. D. Tansley knows unix/linux very well, and is a very good teacher too. (In my opinion if you study this book and "The Korn Shell" by Olczak you'll become very good at Unix and Shell scripting.) He has obviously thought a great deal about the organization of the book; in my opinion he has done it very well. About 1/2 the book is devoted to grep, find. awk, cron, file permissions, quoting, the login environment, etc. His explanations are the best I have read, and all this is enhanced by his organization of the material and his examples. He then gets into shell scripts, things like conditional testing, control flow structures, functions, and then more advanced material. And once again he does a very nice job. The more I read this book and use it in my daily work, the more impressed I am with it. If you are a unix/linux user do yourself a favor and get this book. One reviewer has given this book a scathing review; in my opinion this reviewer is totally off-the-wall. It may be that he has a problem with the english language (he's from Swizterland). Set aside his remarks.

This is a marvellous book on Unix/Linux shell programming. D. Tansley knows unix/linux very well, and is a very good teacher too. He has obviously thought a great deal about the organization of the book; in my opinion he has done it very well. About 1/2 the book is devoted to grep, find. awk, cron, file permissions, quoting, the login environment, etc. His explanations are the best I have read, and all this is enhanced by his organization of the material and his examples. He then gets into shell scripts, things like conditional testing, control flow structures, functions, and then more advanced material. And once again he does a very nice job. The more I read this book and use it in my daily work, the more impressed I am with it. If you are a unix/linux user do yourself a favor and get this book.

1. This book contains many errors like other readers have pointed out, but its shell programming examples really help me. Those examples I can't find from other books. 2. This book will not help you too much in unix concepts, and thus you may have to buy another good unix concepts book to solve those problems. 3. overall, as long as you have enough time to play those examples in your unix machine and want to write a 30 pages of codes like those in chapter 21 and 22, this is definitely the one you want and bring you to another level! 4. personally, I buy two different books to study a computer skill. One is the text book by college professor who may insure the concepts are correct, the other is the book having enterprise examples. But it is so hard for one to find the one having both. This book partially fit my second need!

A friend of mine raves about "Linux & Unix Shell Programming" by David Tansley, and I certainly have to agree with him.In my case, I had to add Linux to my Windows 98 computer so that I could better talk to and understand programmers who enter the programming contest at . This book would almost be my "Best Friend" if such a thing were possible, because it lets me look up the DOS terms I memorized years ago and see the equivalent Linux terms and syntax. (I'm in love with that feature, by the way)."Linux & Unix Shell Programming" even has material that will help you learn the same CGI that is found on many web pages, and, thank goodness, the wild cards I fell in love with in DOS are there.As you can see from the table of contents, below, it covers quite alot of ground, from "Introduction to Linux/Unix in general" to "Building CGI scripts for a web site."Cool, eh?Definitely buy it if you're looking to understand Linux, and especially if you're an old DOS user from the early computer age.The Table of Contents is below. I hope you fall in love with it.John Knoderer [email protected] [email protected] -- PART 1: THE SHELL -- Chap 1. File Security and Permissions -- Chap 2. Using 'find' and 'xargs' -- Chap 3. Running Commands Unattended -- Chap 4. Filename Substitution -- Chap 5. Shell Input and Output -- Chap 6. Command Execution Order -- PART 2: TEXT FILTERING -- Chap 7. Introducing Regular Expressions -- Chap 8. The 'grep' Family -- Chap 9. Introducing 'awk' -- Chap 10. Using 'sed' -- Chap 11. Merge and Divide -- Chap 12. Using 'tr' -- PART 3: THE LOGIN ENVIRONMENT -- Chap 13. The Login Environment -- Chap 14. Environment and Shell Variables -- Chap 15. Quoting -- PART 4: BASIC SHELL PROGRAMMING -- Chap 16. Introduction to Shell Scripts -- Chap 17. Conditional Testing -- Chap 18. Control Flow Structures -- Chap 19. Shell Functions -- Chap 20. Passing Parameters To Scripts -- Chap 21. Creating Screen Output -- Chap 22. Creating Screen Input -- Chap 23. Debugging Scripts -- Chap 24. Shell Built-in Commands -- PART 5: BETTER SCRIPTING SKILLS -- Chap 25. Going Further With Here Documents -- Chap 26. Shell Utilities -- Chap 27. A Small Collection of Scripts -- Chap 28. Run Level Scripts -- Chap 29. CGI Scripts -- APPENDICES -- Appendix A. ASCII Art -- Appendix B. Useful Shell Commands

The author has explained the critical concepts in a lucid manner. Part 5 of the book is a must read. Overall a very good book.