Pro Bash Programming : Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell, Second Edition

CHAPTER 13

Data Processing

Data manipulation includes a wide range of actions, far more than can be adequately covered in a single chapter. However, most actions are just the application of techniques already covered in earlier chapters. Arrays are a basic data structure, and although the syntax was covered in Chapter 5 and they were used in the fifteen puzzle code in Chapter 11, I haven’t yet explained their uses. Parameter expansion has been used in a number of chapters, but its application to parsing data structures has not been discussed.

This chapter will cover different ways of using strings and arrays, how to parse character-delimited records ...