SAMS Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours FOURTH EDITION

Chapter 17. Advanced Shell Programming

In the preceding hour, you learned about the basics of dropping a set of Unix commands into a file and turning them into shell scripts. It turns out that shell scripts can be remarkably capable and in just a few lines you can often produce sophisticated mini-programs that make your time at the command line more productive or even more fun. This chapter expands on the shell script topic by presenting four shell scripts that will hopefully whet your appetite and teach you a lot more about how Unix makes it simple to expand and customize your computing experience.

Goals for This Hour

In this hour, you will explore the following scripts

• Find files fast with mylocate

• Count commands on your system with cmdcnt

• Know your ...