Hi,
since i decided to get more into script programming, i trying to figure out what book might be of a bigger help for a newbie.
On Amazon i read, that UNIX(R) Shells by Example (4th Edition) is the best book since it comes also with examples a newbie can learn from.
This book is from 2004 and i worry a little that it is old. But perhaps this doesn’t matter.
Anyway, would you recommend this book or are there better books to learn from. I lag the knowledge of the basics and i need to start somewhere to make good scripts.
I started off to make for myself a script for installing nonfree stuff after a fresh install. Since i hate to enter everything by itself, i like to have it more automated. The lazy way i guess.
But i would like to make it more convenient and efficient.
So any tip or suggestion i will consider. It just need to be written for a real beginner with examples.
“Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide” link available on http://tldp.org/guides.html [that page has many other useful resources]
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.1.8, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11
Apart from DD’s advice, never forget to consult the man page of bash during your study. It will teach you how to find the exact definitions of statments and that will come in handy later because a “normal” person will know by hart only a small subset of all bash stuff, but you will rememeber that “there was something like …” and then being able to find that quick in the man page is a good thing.
BTW, as bash is based on Ksh (and Posix shell) and all are considarable older than 2004 and have not seen further developements since, a book from 2004 (and older) is OK. I still use a paper man page from 1995 for ksh.
It certainly doesn’t matter as much as, say, a ‘Using KDE’ book would do…
I have to say, regarding the links in DenverD’s post, those are the ones most often quoted, and they are worth reading, but I don’t really find them all that helpful (probably me rather than anything else…but you may share my learning style), so you could also try:
On 03/29/2011 05:06 AM, JoergJaeger wrote:
>
> Well, i took everything in consideration.
> But, is a book still relevant then?
in addition to all the things available on the net, i also find it very useful to have paper in my hand…
my favorite happens to be what i have a “Linux Unleashed - The
Comprehensive Solution - Third Edition” which came with Red Hat 5.1
when sold new in 1998…
and it is right about 99% of the time (but, don’t expect to find
anything useful except Linux (that is, if you need KDE4 info, you
are outta luck in that three pound book!))
i bought it USED off the shelf, very reasonable (considering i’ve used
it lots, since 2002) at Powell’s Books…they ship: http://www.powells.com/ and have a searchable database
It’s comprehensive and groups, Linux commands, BASH commands, SED, AWK, vi, emacs, pattern recognition, tcsh/csh, package management, version controls, etc. with examples in most cases. I think great for beginners and old timers alike.
Here’s a site for interesting BASH/Linux commands you can get lost in by copying from and pasting to your terminal just to see how it works. And if you’re a registered user give it a thumbs up or down: All commands | commandlinefu.com
One of my first shell scripts was to capture and sort uniquely my bash history so when I vaguely remember a command, i could go to that file to see how I used it. Later I updated it to exclude obvious commands and those that only differ by a file/folder name, like cp, etc.
