Few aspects of Unix system administration are more intimate than the relationship between the admin and their chosen shell. After all, the shell is the most fundamental interface to the system, the ...

It is easy to dismiss bash — the typical Linux shell program — as just a command prompt that allows scripting. Bash, however, is a full-blown programming language. I wouldn’t presume to tell you that ...

Ever wondered why programming in Bash is so difficult? Bash employs the same constructs as traditional programming languages; however, under the hood, the logic is rather different. The Bourne-Again ...

Claim your complimentary copy (valued at $35.99) for free before the offer expires on April 9. Dive into the world of Linux shell scripting with this hands-on guide. If you’re comfortable using the ...

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Once a script is prepared and tested, you can get a significant task completed simply by typing the script's name followed by any required arguments. Developing scripts to handle your more complicated ...

If you're writing a Bash script, you will invariably need to pass values to it—aka arguments or positional parameters. Bash's ...

You will most often use Bash functions to make your shell life easier; instead of typing out complex command pipelines, create a function and inject arguments. You'd place these in your bashrc file, ...

Every time we publish a Linux hack that uses a shell script, someone will chime in about how awful it is to program shell scripts. While we like the ubiquity and efficiency, we can’t disagree that the ...

If you're not yet comfortable with writing scripts on Unix and Linux systems, this post might get you off to a healthy start. Creating a script on a Unix or Linux system can be dead easy or ...