Hour 1. Shell Basics

My father is an avid woodworker. He has a tool chest that holds all his woodworking tools, from screwdrivers and chisels to power sanders and power drills. Over the years, he has used his tools to build everything from a toy bridge to a shed. By applying the same tools, he has been able to build all the elements required in his projects.

In many ways, shell programming is similar to woodworking. A woodworking project requires a design for the project and its elements along with the right tools. In shell programming, the project design is provided by the programmer and the tools are utilities or commands provided by UNIX. There are simple commands such as ls and cd, and there are also commands such as awk and sed, which are ...

Get Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours, Second Edition 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.