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
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
not for beginners, December 26, 2008
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."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not only for beginners, December 7, 2008
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|