Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in Open Source)

This book is geared towards any Unix user who doesn't want to spend time creating or testing shell scripts. Instead, Shell Scripting Recipes dissects and explains over 150 much-needed and practical real-world examples, and then shows the reader how and when to appropriately use them.

Because most scripts found in this book are POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface)-compliant, they are supported by many of the major shell variants, including Bash, ksh and sh, among others. File conversion, system administration, and resource monitoring are just a few of the topics covered in this highly practical shell scripting reference.

Chris F.A. Johnson was introduced to Unix in 1990 and learned shell scripting because there was no C compiler on the system. His first major project was a menu-driven, user-extensible database system with report generator. Chris uses the shell as his primary, general-purpose programming language, and his projects have included a member database, menuing system, and POP3 mail filtering and retrieval. Chris is the author of Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Apress, 2005). When not pushing shell scripting to the limit, he designs and codes web sites, teaches chess, and composes cryptic crosswords.