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

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: postal customer, extended regexes, shell script design, What's Next, Sun Jun, Current Resident (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Portable shell scripting is today 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 is this book for?

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

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

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 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430210435
• ISBN-13: 978-1430210436
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #77,184 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #48 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Operating Systems > Linux

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 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)

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.

6 of 7 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

"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."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly Excellent, October 6, 2009

By	Jay P. Vansanten - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

I just received the book today and have read/skimmed through the work.

This is one of the most literate and thoughtful programming books I've read and ranks among the best on shell scripting.

Most books on scripting spend a lot of time on installation/environment issues, or "quick hits" to perform a specific action.

Author Seebach takes an approach more akin to classic works on programming -- and discusses in great depth and clarity the details of how the shell actually works. Throughout, this is a patient and thorough approach. Programmers who are learning the shell will find a this a most helpful discussion. However, those without a programming background will probably not understand why these issues are important. This provides required background for the goal of portability. As such it offers a wealth of insight into the technical operation of the shell.

There's not a lot of code in the work. However, it provides a thorough background on the many issues raised by shell portability -- and there are more than you'd expect.

This work focuses on descendants of the Bourne shell. The common base is POSIX. This includes: bash -- Bourne again shell, ksh -- Korn shell, Almquist and variants. zsh, or the Z shell, is mentioned in so far as it can emulate the POSIX standard. The C shell -- csh, and its more modern variant tcsh are not included for several reasons. The syntax of these shells is based more on C, and are not considered to be as robust alternatives for composing scripts. Their forte is command line operation in the opinion of the author.

If you like to think before you code, this is such a fine work to support your efforts. If you don't like to think before you code, you might want to rethink that...