Hour 2. Script Basics

Chapter 1, “Shell Basics,” introduced the concept of a shell and commands, and described how the shell reads input and executes the specified commands. This chapter expands on those basic concepts to explain in greater detail what the shell is and how it works, including the login and logout process as it relates to the shell.

This chapter also explains how to group commands that are normally executed interactively into a file, thus creating a program or script. Scripts are the power behind the shell because they allow commands to be grouped together to create new commands.

Specifically, the topics covered in this chapter are

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