Rating: 
Summary: Packed with practical information...
Review: Another one of my goals this year is to get familiar with Linux and shell scripting. I have some "how to" books, but I also picked up Dave Taylor's Wicked Cool Shell Scripts - 101 Scripts For Linux, Mac OS X, and UNIX Systems (No Starch Press). Taylor's done a great job with this book.
Chapter List: Introduction; The Missing Code Library; Improving on User Commands; Creating Utilities; Tweaking Unix; System Administration: Managing Users; System Administration: System Maintenance; Web and Internet Users; Webmaster Hacks; Web and Internet Administration; Internet Server Administration; Mac OS X Scripts; Shell Script Fun and Games; Afterword; Index
Taylor didn't write this book as a tutorial on script writing. Rather, he wanted to provide a "cookbook" of scripts that people could learn from and use immediately. He also wanted something more interesting than the scripts normally found in the how to books on the market. I'd agree that he's accomplished his purpose. Each script starts with a listing of the code and an explanation of how it works. He shows you how to run the script and what the results of running the script should be. Finally, there's a "hacking the script" paragraph that explains how you might want to modify the script to do something different. This entire package of paragraphs in each script serves as a sort of "mini-lesson" on some aspect of script writing.
As I mentioned above, I'm not quite ready for this book right now. When I pick up some fundamentals, I'll be heading into the Web and Internet Users section. There's code there on using Lynx and shell scripts to strip out information from websites. I have a project in mind I've wanted to do for some time, and I think I finally found the tools that will allow me to do it.
As a side note: LinuxWorld Magazine voted this book the Best Shell Script Programming Book of 2004. So I'm not the only one who thinks it's pretty good...
A well-written book packed with a ton of practical information. If you have a background in shell scripting and you want to stretch a little, this is the book for you...
Rating:
Summary: Great guide to scripts
Review: Folks, if scripts intimidate you in any way, this book is great! It brings practical scripts in a wide variety of areas to you. Once you learn these scripts, it's easy to customize them to meet your needs.If you're really interested in becoming a Linux Sysadmin, you need to know how to script. Once you learn these scripts, you'll be able to demonstrate your knowledge on any interview!
Rating: 
Summary: Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
Review: For someone rather new to shell scripting this book was just what I needed. Having started off with Learning the BASH Shell, I grabbed Dave's book to what what else I could and add to my library of scripts. What this book pointed out to me was the wide range of applications that scripting is usefull for. Being someone new to a *NIX system, part of my problem has been just knowing what can/should be done with a script....This book solved part of that problem. The only reason this didn't get 5 stars was that I could've used more line-by-line reasoning (like a "PERL by Example" book). I can understand that this would've made the book about 5x longer though... Anyways, overall a good read, but most of all it got me to THINK about using scripts in my everyday programming.
Rating:
Summary: Real World Application
Review: I am a technical trainer for Fortune 500 companies and have been searching for a scripts that would allow my students to go from theory to application.
Dave Taylor's book gave me the foundation that I needed and in a few moments I was able to modify the provided scripts to run in another UNIX shell and extended the validation test to limit the number of characters as well as emulate an input mask for a SSN.
If you only get one book on scripting this would be the one to add to your library.
Rating:
Summary: Wickedly excellent!
Review: I first laid eyes upon this book at a computer show; the publisher had a paper copy. This is a cool publisher with alot of cool books and as I browsed this one I realized that this was going to be another one. Yipppeee! It's finally out and it's even better with the real cover :) Okay, seriously now. This is a great book. Gets right to the point and it's much more fun to ready than other scripting books that I've seen. You get alot in a little space.
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: I found the book easy to use and very helpful as I relearn Unix and Unix Scripting.
Rating:
Summary: Cool Book
Review: I guess it's always difficult deciding on whether to buy a techy book like this one - particularly if you're ordering on the web. Fortunately, I bought my copy from one of those old-fashioned book shops and was able to browse through the scripts before making the decision :-)
This book has some very useful scripts in it. They probably won't be *exactly* what you're looking for, but they are good examples that can easily be adapted and appended to help you work smarter/faster.
The accompanying descriptions are written so that those who are unfamiliar with the shell will have enough information to get the scripts up and running - and those who are familiar with the shell won't feel patronized.
Being a Mac scripter myself, I also like the fact that the author *likes* OS X and has included lots of OS X-specific information in the book.
This would be a useful addition to the library of a Mac user who wants to move from plain *user* to *power-user* :-)
Rating:
Summary: Very handy scripts that are cool & helpful
Review: I like writing scripts to monitor my systems and networks, but, I am not a good scripter :-) Dave's book is now one of my power tool collections.
Rating:
Summary: Surprised me
Review: I often take a dim view of books that use superlatives in their titles. I also don't think there is anything "wicked cool" about shell scripting in general: if you need anything complex at all, Perl or something else is probably a much better way to to it. Shell scripting gets awfully nasty awfully fast. However, I was wrong. Yes, shell scripting is an abominable way to approach most of the tasks this book explores. Just the same, the author does it "wicked cool" and you can learn a lot both from how he sees the problem and the other Unix tools he uses as part of the script. So while you might shudder at the idea of writing a link-checker in Bash, the author's clever use of Lynx's "traverse" flag is something you might make use of elsewhere. You'll find useful things like that throughout the book, and even if you'd rather write it in Perl or whatever, the logic is worth examining. Mac OS X users will appreciate that a whole chapter is devoted to that. There's nothing particularly deep there, nothing you will be surprised by, but it's nice to see Mac get specific mention. That brings up another important point: shells are different and Unixes are different. The author does pay a lot of attention to the differences that can cause problems for your scripts when they need to run on different platforms.
Rating:
Summary: Surprised me
Review: I often take a dim view of books that use superlatives in their titles. I also don't think there is anything "wicked cool" about shell scripting in general: if you need anything complex at all, Perl or something else is probably a much better way to to it. Shell scripting gets awfully nasty awfully fast. However, I was wrong. Yes, shell scripting is an abominable way to approach most of the tasks this book explores. Just the same, the author does it "wicked cool" and you can learn a lot both from how he sees the problem and the other Unix tools he uses as part of the script. So while you might shudder at the idea of writing a link-checker in Bash, the author's clever use of Lynx's "traverse" flag is something you might make use of elsewhere. You'll find useful things like that throughout the book, and even if you'd rather write it in Perl or whatever, the logic is worth examining. Mac OS X users will appreciate that a whole chapter is devoted to that. There's nothing particularly deep there, nothing you will be surprised by, but it's nice to see Mac get specific mention. That brings up another important point: shells are different and Unixes are different. The author does pay a lot of attention to the differences that can cause problems for your scripts when they need to run on different platforms.
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