Beginning Portable Shell Scripting: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in Open Source) [Paperback]

Peter Seebach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 21, 2008 | Series: Expert's Voice in Open Source

Portable shell scripting is the future of modern Linux, OS X, and Unix command–line access. Beginning Portable Shell Scripting: From Novice to Professional teaches shell scripting by using the common core of most shells and expands those principles to all of scripting.

You will learn about portable scripting and how to use the same syntax and design principles for all shells. You’ll discover about the interaction between shells and other scripting languages like Ruby and Python, and everything you learn will be shown in context for Linux, OS X, bash, and AppleScript.

What you’ll learn

This book will prime you on not just shell scripting, but also the modern context of portable shell scripting. You will learn

• The core Linux/OS X shell constructs from a portability point of view
• How to write scripts that write other scripts, and how to write macros and debug them
• How to write and design shell script portably from the ground up
• How to use programmable utilities and their inherent portability to your advantage, while pinpointing potential traps
• Pulling everything together, how to engineer scripts that play well with Python and Ruby, and even run on embedded systems

Who this book is for

This book is for system administrators, programmers, and testers working across Linux, OS X, and the Unix command line.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Shell Scripting
2. Patterns and Regular Expressions
3. Basic Shell Scripting
4. Core Shell Features Explained
5. Shells Within Shells
6. Invocation and Execution
7. Shell Language Portability
8. Utility Portability
9. Bringing It All Together
10. Shell Script Design
11. Mixing and Matching

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter Seebach has been using Unix since he needed to sit on a phone book to reach the keyboard. He's been writing professionally about Unix for mass audiences since the last millennium. He is currently employed as a senior software engineer at Wind River Systems and continues to write prolifically on a freelance basis.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (November 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430210435
• ISBN-13: 978-1430210436
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I ever wrote, November 11, 2009

By 

Peter Seebach - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Portable Shell Scripting: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

Having heard that authors frequently review their own books, I thought I'd give it a try. This is, without a doubt, the best book on portable shell scripting I have ever written. Sadly, it is also the worst book on portable shell scripting I have ever written.

What I can tell you is this:

* Before I started writing this book, I thought I was fairly expert in portable shell scripting.

* I learned a lot more writing this book than I knew before I started writing it.

* This book has ended up being one of my key desk references, which is pretty funny, because you'd think I'd know this stuff by now.

I'm not totally happy with everything about this book. I'm giving it five stars anyway because I can't name anything I think is better for the purpose right now... But I wouldn't mind revising and expanding for a second edition.

Don't let the "beginning" throw you off; this book was a real eye-opener for me, and I'd been writing shell scripts for somewhere between fifteen and twenty years, including production software. On the other hand, if you've got a bit of programming experience, I like to imagine that you really could have this as your first introduction to the shell, and probably do just fine.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not for beginners, December 26, 2008

By 

Jeanne Boyarsky (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beginning Portable Shell Scripting: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

"Beginning Portable Shell Scripting" has a very clear mission - teach the reader how to write shell scripts that will work in all Bourne family shells. The book assumes you know UNIX already. While you don't need to know shell scripting already, it is helpful. The book is very intense if you are using it learn the scripting basics at the same time.

I like how the author starts by showing the interactive command type in by the user vs what is evaluated/run vs what is output. This was a good way to teach shell scripting quoting. I also like the emphasis on what happens in edge cases.

I think that non-portable code could be better flagged. It's easy to gloss over embedded in the text. Or find again. Two chapters really went into detail on portability. I guess I expected it to be flagged throughout.

Chapter two says you can skip it if you already know reg exps. A word of advice: don't. I recommend skimming it anyway the chapter contains valuable distinctions on globbing/shell expansion. I also liked chapter three's multiple attempts at a script showing the errors in each until getting to the desired behavior.

As an aside, there's about 80 pages of appendices and the about the technical reviewer page was both entertaining and written completely in UNIX shell script.

The book mainly loses points for not being aimed at beginners with a title containing the word "beginning."

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not only for beginners, December 7, 2008

By 

J. P. Mens (Germany, Europe) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Portable Shell Scripting: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

Once in a while I find a book that gives me a memorable impression. One such book is Apress' Beginning Portable Shell Scripting by Peter Seebach.

Seebach covers historic aspects of the Unix shells as well as the ins and outs of shell programming. He explains very well why it is so important to think about portability, and that writing portable programs is often not very much more work than not doing so.

Although the book is titled Beginning Portable Shell Scripting it isn't a book only for beginners -- I know lots of pros who should read this book from cover to cover.