Expert Shell Scripting (Expert's Voice in Open Source) [Paperback]

Ron Peters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 25, 2008 | ISBN-10: 143021841X | ISBN-13: 978-1430218418 | Edition: 1

There are tens of thousands of Linux and Unix system administrators who are pressed for time and need an immediate fix. Expert Shell Scripting offers quick and easy solutions to many common (but challenging) problems that would otherwise take hours to solve. This is a book for people who know shell scripting, but don’t have the time to reinvent the wheel. And it is distilled from more than a decade of work done for Intel by a shell scripting guru.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ron Peters spent more than 10 years administering Linux and Unix systems while building a very large library of shell scripts. He realized that the world is full of How-To documents, but not many seem to read them. Neither can many system administrators lay claim to being shell scripting experts. He apologizes that it took him so long to make his efforts known to the world. He is married with two children and very happy that he found the time to write this book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 143021841X
• ISBN-13: 978-1430218418
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #232,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good tool to have in your box, February 25, 2009

By 

J. Pease (Odessa, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Expert Shell Scripting (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

This book is not intended to teach you how to program nor the basics of shell scripting. The book identifies it's target audience as intermediate to advanced shell coders.

Much of the book is presented in a narrative style, looking at a problem, proposing a solution and explaining how the various parts of that solution work. There are also some 'recipe' style sections, specifically Chapter 24 "Text-Processing One-Liners".

I have personally found the book interesting from the very first chapter, which addresses some debugging techniques I was not aware of. So far it is proving handy to have nearby when I'm hacking on a shell script.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent detailed resource, just not for beginners, March 8, 2009

By 

Zaine Ridling (Missouri, US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Expert Shell Scripting (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

Ron Peters does not explain many basic programming structures here, but that's okay, because the main purpose of this book is to combine some of the most unique tools, code snippets, and scripts that go beyond the level of basic scripts. This is essentially a cookbook of lesser-known recipes and fairly advanced algorithms, commands, and scripts that have proved useful to the author over time.

Peters demonstrates a few very useful complex command line commands, like those found on the Command-line-fu site. The scripts are tailored to be useful at multiple levels. Most times, however, there is little or no error-checking since that is not necessarily the point of a [specific] script. The reader must be prepared to make modifications to fit his local environment. The reason you want this book is that Peters goes into great detail about how and why the scripts were written in their present form, and he includes sound explanations of how to avoid certain problems. He notes that most shell scripting sources are heavy in obfuscation and light on clarity, therefore he is as explicit as possible in this book, and favored explaining too much rather than too little. Many chapters included can be read as shell scripts with extremely detailed commentary. I'm glad I bought it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Adds context and ties concepts together, June 20, 2009

By 

Katrina Owen (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Expert Shell Scripting (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

Expert Shell Scripting helps bridge the gap between following a recipe and truly solving problems.

It's not a cookbook, and it doesn't teach basic programming structures. As such, it would probably frustrate beginners. Where this book shines is that it adds context and ties concepts together beautifully.

A full chapter on debugging, for example explores different approaches to troubleshooting, comparing and contrasting the various approaches, discussing where each approach might be appropriate, pointing out pitfalls and gotchas along the way. Another chapter deals with comparisons and tests, making sense of the intricacies and subtleties of comparing different types of things and the myriad of ways of doing it well, or doing it wrong. The book covers a wide range of topics, from command line switches and options, variable setting, date/time manipulation, text processing, and data redirection, scheduling, interaction, and automation.
The progression is swift, and the book ends with a section of gems that the author has spent years accumulating.

It is perfect for the programmer who has never written shell scripts (or just dabbled), since it quickly takes you beyond syntax and structures and bring you to the point where you can actually DO stuff in the shell. If you are an intermediate shell scripter it will probably fill in many gaps and catapult you to a higher level of competence.

Highly recommended.