Pro Bash Programming

by Chris F.A. Johnson

The bash shell is a complete programming language, not merely a glue to combine external Linux commands. By taking full advantage of shell internals, shell programs can perform as snappily as utilities written in C or other compiled languages.

Genres: Computer Science, Nonfiction, Programming, Technology, Computers

Kindle Edition

First published October 19, 2009

Reviews

[Karla]

Jumps around, advances quickly without adequate explanation, and assumes you already know how to operate in vi and bash. I supplemented this with other books (and a lot of googling) that provided a better grounding in bash. Skip this and look for the O’Reilly series or another alternative.

[A. Gökhan Demir]

I studied this book up to the middle of chapter 12, and I have mixed feelings about it. I learned many valuable concepts about Bash. However, starting from chapter 11, it feels like you’re reading the author’s personal script memos. There is still a lot to learn from the scripts in those chapters, but they become confusing very quickly for a student, especially the game scripts. I wish they had moved those chapters to the end, like an appendix or an optional section. Anyway, if you’re interested, go ahead and read it. I had fun, and I especially enjoyed reading the book in the voice of an old-school Linux guru with a long beard (Chris).

[Ietrio]

Another pointless book that adds nothing to the information available online. I can even say it subtracts information. The best part is the phrasing:

> Both print information to the standard output stream, but printf is much more powerful, and echo has its problems.

> You and I know what constitutes a valid variable name, but do your users?

Anyway, a second star for being honest and not calling a Bash book "Linux shell programming" like others.

[Russell]

I wasn't expecting a ton from this book since it's not a reference nor is it very lengthy, so I was happy that several of my blindspots were addressed (in addition to clarifying some tricks and custom functions that are bound to save me time in the long-run). Wish I had read it years ago, but could've done without the chapters on grid games and terminal mouse events.