From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command Line [Paperback]

Oliver Kiddle (Author), Jerry Peek (Author), Peter Stephenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 2004

Some areas are covered in other books, but this one goes into some little-seen side streets and alleyways to show you the shortcuts to more efficient use of the shell. ...The material here is invaluable: you're not going to get it from the manual pages! I strongly recommend it.
- Ernest J.

This is a totally neat idea for a book... the command line gets addictive quickly.
- Bill Ryan, Bill's House O Insomnia

This comprehensive, hands-on guide focuses on two of the most popular and feature-rich shells, bash and zsh. From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command Line is a book for all skill levels. Novices will receive an introduction to the features of shells and power users will get to explore the benefits of zsh--one of the most powerful, versatile shells ever written. Intermediate users will uncover hints, recipes, and ideas to enhance their skill sets.

The book covers shell programming, but is unique in its thorough coverage of using shells interactively--a powerful and time-saving alternative to windows and a mouse. This strong author team has written an immediately useful book, packed with examples and suggestions that users of Unix, Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows can readily apply.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Oliver Kiddle is actively involved with the development of ZSH, and acts as a team authority in areas such as completion and parameters. Kiddle is a graduate of the University of York.

Jerry Peek is a freelance writer and instructor. He has used shells extensively and has taught users about them for over 20 years. Peek is the "Power Tools" columnist for Linux Magazine and coauthored the book UNIX Power Tools.

Peter Stephenson grew up in northeast England and studied physics at Oxford, where he earned a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. Stephenson spent 9 years as a physics researcher, with an emphasis on computational physics, and resided in Liverpool, Swansea, Berlin, and Pisa.

Since 2000, Stephenson has been a software engineer with Cambridge Silicon Radio, where he works on the baseband firmware for short-range digital radio standards, such as Bluetooth. Stephenson has been involoved in the development of ZSH since the 1990s, when he began writing the FAQs. The past several years, he has coordinated the shell's development.

About the Author

Oliver Kiddle is actively involved in the development of Zsh, and is an authority within the ZSH team on areas such as completion and parameters. Kiddle is a graduate of the

Univesity of York.

Jerry Peek is a freelance writer and instructor who has used shells extensively, and taught

users about them, for more than 20 years. Peek is the "Power Tools" columnist for Linux

Magazine, and is the co-author of O’Reilly’s long-standing classic, "Unix Power Tools".

Peter Stephenson grew up in the northeast of England and studied Physics at Oxford,

ending up with a bachelor’s degree and a D.Phil. He spent nine years as a researcher in physics in Liverpool, Swansea, Berlin, and Pisa with a particular interest in computational physics. Since 2000, Stephenson has been a software engineer with Cambridge Silicon Radio, working on the baseband firmware for short range digital radio standards such as Bluetooth. Stephenson as been involved in the development of Zsh since the very early days back at the start of the 1990s when he started to write the FAQ. For the last few years, he’s served as coordinator of the shell's development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Apress (November 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590593766
• ISBN-13: 978-1590593769
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Unix
  • #88 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Linux

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The missing manual, November 29, 2004

By 

Ernest Friedman-Hill "JavaRanch Sheriff" (Gaithersburg, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command Line (Paperback)

The command line was introduced with the first interactive computers, Whereas GUIs are pretty and convenient for many tasks, power users know that only a command line lets you tell a computer exactly what to do. "From Bash to Z Shell" wants to let everybody in on this secret, and it meets its goal admirably.

"From Bash to Z Shell" assumes little about the reader's experience with computers. The first few chapters introduce the concept of a command shell and something of the UNIX philosophy. Don't worry, though, because examples throughout the book show bash and zsh running on Windows. These first few chapters look at the C shell as well as the eponymous shells.

The middle chapters each explore a single important concept like command editing, completion, pattern matching, redirection, and process management. Special features of bash and zsh are introduced in context. I can't stress enough how useful these chapters are: the manual pages for these shells are large but still terse and cryptic. This book manages to provide a conceptual framework into which all of its useful tidbits can be organized and absorbed.

The last few chapters look at scripting: both full blown programs and smaller chunks of shell-customization code. Again, the material here is invaluable: you're not going to get it from the manual pages!

If you work on UNIX systems, or if you'd like to make your Windows environment vastly more powerful, you need this book. I strongly recommend it.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a zsh reference..., November 29, 2004

By 

Christopher B. Browne "cbbrowne" (Scarborough, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command Line (Paperback)

This book walks through various aspects of how to use Bash and zsh to do powerful things, with something of a focus on how to configure them. (Thus, you're learning to make your shell environment even more powerful!)

It walks through, in parallel, the way to configure the two shells. I didn't expect this to be useful; I expected that I'd prefer to have more zsh material, and skip the Bashing. It turns out, however, that, in many cases, their parallel development has led to strong parallels in functionality. This is useful because, well, I don't get to install zsh everywhere that I might like to :-).

Somewhat surprisingly, the book waits until right near the end to present the notions of control structures and writing functions. The last two chapters are quite the culmination of the effort; one on functions provides a presentation of script option parsing better than I have seen anywhere; absolutely excellent.

The final chapter, on writing zsh command completion extensions, is similarly wonderful. The reference and online documents are fairly opaque without having a good overview of what you're trying to accomplish. The book provides that overview...

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Info!, February 5, 2006

By 

Matt Darby "drb000" (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command Line (Paperback)

I've just finished reading From Bash to Z Shell from APress Publishing. It's taught this Linux NetAdmin several new tricks, and should be an addition to any Admin's bookshelf. It'll fit nicely next to your O'Reilly's.

I initially bought the book to lean the Z Shell (zsh), but decided that I'll stick with good 'ole Bash for a little longer. The tricks I've learned through this book about Bash quenches my needs for the moment. This book teaches you about essential techniques such as CDPATH, History options, key bindings, editing modes, and tons more. I've only read it only once, but I have already dog-eared 20 pages. My ~/.bashrc, and ~/.inputrc are in full swing with many new shortcuts! I highly recommend this book!!