Rating: 
Summary: A great book for learning Unix scripting
Review: I've been using this book to learn Unix scripting. By writing the scripts in the book and seeing them work you get an understaning of how the script functions. By taking pieces of different scripts and using them in your own you can build up a good understanding of scripting concepts. I've tried several books and this one is at the top of my list!
Rating: 
Summary: An Easy Way Into Shell Scriptors Heaven
Review: Shell scripting was always one of those things that slightly turned me off. Because of my aversion to it, it seemed to keep me from ever feeling like a platform guru. (Don't get me wrong. Just because you can write shell script, doesn't mean you are a platform guru.)
Just one hour with Dave's book and things really begin to change. I don't recommend reading this cover-to-cover. It's the book you flip open and decide that you will invest an hour and learn to do something cool that you've never done before. Because of the breadth of examples, it's hard not to get excited about doing something new.
Since I've been playing around with the book, I've not only gotten over the hurdle of feeling comfortable about shell script in general. But, I've had a lot of fun and done some cool things that I've never done before. I've written scripts to automatically update a remote ftp server. I've written scripts to grab a bunch of stock data off the web. Finally, I've written a script to gather information about 3,000 high-tech companies. Pretty cool stuff!
If you have been weary of getting into shell scripting for whatever reason, this book is most likely a fun way to start getting some experience.
Rating:
Summary: Wicked Cool Shell Scripts in the Real World
Review: Shell scripts are one of the building blocks that makes UNIX (all flavors) so fundamentally powerful. Some look down on the shell script and feel that it is to simple a tool. A review of any of the shells man pages will quickly show the range of activities one can accomplish with a _simple_ shell script. It's automation of the command prompt and is only limited by your imagination and understanding of UNIX.Dave Taylor has put together 101 shell scripts covering a multitude of topics for the many different UNIX platforms (OSX included). This is more than a shell game (pun intended) for Dave. It is quite apparent that he is a quality educator and writer who believes a proper context is a must for learning. The added benefit is that at times this may help make the learning process transparent. You will need at least some basic understanding of UNIX commands and shell scripting before this book will be useful. Dave doesn't intend it to be a command reference book or a shell howto but rather a "cookbook" utilizing real world scripts that may simplify your life while teaching you a thing or two. If you are new to UNIX or shell scripting there are many introductory books and/or web tutorials that you should start with before moving onto this book. The format and functionality of Wicked Cool Shell Scripts doesn't lend to reading it as a novel. Scan the table of contents and pick out the scripts that catch your attention or that cover issues you are currently dealing with. No matter how you read it, Wicked Cool Shell Scripts will either put a few more skills in your drawer or sharpen some of your old ones.
Rating:
Summary: Try Scripting Web Applications
Review: The book is aimed at all users and systems administrators of linux and every unix variant, including most importantly the MacOS. If you already know some scripting, you should be quite at ease here. Taylor does decide to restrict his discussion to the Bourne shell and its descendent, bash. He drops the C shell! But, as he points out, the scripts he gives can be easily rewritten in the latter if you desire. The book can be roughly divided into two parts. The first is essentially traditional scripting tasks. A user from 1988 would see original material here, but no qualitative surprises. The second half of the book is more interesting. It centres on Web applications. For example, when running a Web server that uses CGI, Perl and C are often the choice for implementing logic. But sometimes you can get by with a simpler approach - using a Bourne shell. Taylor shows how to do this to make simple web pages, with images, even. Cool! Though this outlook lacks the full expressive power of generating dynamic pages via Java Server Pages/Servlets, these latter alternatives can be quite forbidding to learn. If you are already comfortable with sed, awk, grep [etc], you may want to try this approach, provided your web site is not too complex. In summary, the web scripting approach suggested here may be the most distinctive and useful sections. Worth checking out.
Rating: 
Summary: 101 handy little scripts for unix geeks
Review: This is a fun little book of 101 shell scripts for *nix systems. The scripts are indeed cool, and some are very useful. Unfortunately the code isn't hilighted, so it can be difficult to read when it's spread across multiple pages. The commenting and explanations are somewhat uneven. That being said. It is a fun book and it can be useful. Just make sure you check the table of contents so that you know you are getting a few scripts you can use.
Rating:
Summary: Great book...
Review: This is a great book on Unix shell scripting. The book is loaded with useful scripts and I was even able to use some of the ideas presented in this book to make my own scripts perform much more efficiently. At one point I got stuck with one of the scripts so I emailed the author and he got back to me with a fix within a couple of days. Turned out to be a quirk with the Solaris 8 version of the operating system. I would recommend this book to anyone who works with Unix systems.
Rating:
Summary: Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
Review: This is a wonderful book to explain how to script. It gives a whole bunch of good examples with detailed explanations on what scripts are doing. It is perfect for the person whom wants to get their feet wet scripting in Linux or Mac OS X.
Rating:
Summary: Should have on your Desk
Review: This is one of those "should have on your desk" books. The book and Dave's website is a great little resource. I wanted to do some statistical work and though I was going to have to break down and use Excel or Calc. Then I ran into Dave's book/website. After a little reading, I realize it was possible to nix Excel. Using a couple of Dave's tricks and his scriptbc tool, I had the job done. All shell sans Excel. Nice book, nice website --really useful.
Rating:
Summary: The title speaks for itself!
Review: This was a great technical reference to experience. I was impressed with the explanation of the code as well as explanation of how to augment the code. The author has spend quite a bit of time looking into the repercussions of some "hacks" to certain scripts that could make a system vulnerable to attack. This is definitely one of the best compilations of shell scripts that I have seen. I will personally be using some of the scripts in the book to make my life easier, such as script #42 (Improving readability of DF) and #52 (Killing processes by name). This book is a fun read as well as an important piece of arsenal for the bookshelf.
| 
