Expert Shell Scripting

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxii

   PDF

2. Basic Scripting Techniques

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Shell Script Debugging

      Pages 3-12

   3. Standard Function Library

      Pages 13-17

   4. Date and Time Manipulation

      Pages 19-24

   5. Comparisons and Tests

      Pages 25-29

   6. Accepting Command-Line Options, Switches, and Parameters

      Pages 31-35

   7. Testing Variables and Assigning Defaults

      Pages 37-42

   8. Indirect Reference Variables

      Pages 43-47

   9. Shell Process Tree

      Pages 49-58

   10. Data Redirection

       Pages 59-64

   11. Piping Input to read

       Pages 65-71

3. System Interaction and Advanced Techniques

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 73-73

      PDF

   2. Math from the Shell

      Pages 75-79

   3. cron

      Pages 81-85

   4. Self-Linked Scripts

      Pages 87-89

   5. Throttling Parallel Processes

      Pages 91-98

   6. Command-Line Editing and History

      Pages 99-101

   7. Scripting from the Command Line

      Pages 103-105

   8. Automating User Input with expect

      Pages 107-114

System administrators need libraries of solutions that are ingenious but understandable. They don't want to reinvent the wheel, but they don't want to reinvent filesystem management either! Expert Shell Scripting is the ultimate resource for all working Linux, Unix, and OS X system administrators who would like to have short, succinct, and powerful shell implementations of tricky system scripting tasks.

• Automating small to medium system management tasks
• Analyzing system data and editing configuration files
• Scripting Linux, Unix, and OS X applications using bash, ksh, et al.

• Debugging
• Linux
• OS X
• Processing
• RCS
• configuration
• shell scripting
• system administrator

Ron Peters spent more than ten 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, nor 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.

Policies and ethics