13 Programming the Bourne Again Shell

In This Chapter

Control Structures

File Descriptors

Parameters and Variables

Array Variables

Locality of Variables

Special Parameters

Positional Parameters

Builtin Commands

Expressions

Shell Programs

A Recursive Shell Script

The quiz Shell Script

Chapter 5 introduced the shells and Chapter 8 went into detail about the Bourne Again Shell. This chapter introduces additional Bourne Again Shell commands, builtins, and concepts that carry shell programming to a point where it can be useful. The first part of this chapter covers programming control structures, which are also known as control flow constructs. These structures allow you to write scripts that can loop over command line arguments, make decisions ...

Get A Practical Guide to UNIX for Mac OS X Users now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial