Rating: 
Summary: "Practical" is meaningful in this case!
Review: As opposed to other books with "practical" in the title, this one lives up to its name. I found Chapters 4 (Using Files), 5 (The Environment), and 7 (Using Filters) very helpful. The book is full of many examples of practical things, such as how to delete all blank lines in a file. This makes is valuable for the beginner, and the later chapters contain information for the more advanced shell programmer.
I got this book at a time when the guy who wrote all our shell scripts quit without notice. This book was a lifesaver, as I had to write short (and not so short) shell scripts to automate certain tasks & understand the work he did.
I would like to see more discussion in Chapter 7 (Using Filters) about combining the use of sed and the Unix/Linux command tr. I find that I have to use these together sometimes as one does things the other can't handle. This is the only suggestion I have to improve an already useful book.
Rating:
Summary: "Practical" is meaningful in this case!
Review: As opposed to other books with "practical" in the title, this one lives up to its name. I found Chapters 4 (Using Files), 5 (The Environment), and 7 (Using Filters) very helpful. The book is full of many examples of practical things, such as how to delete all blank lines in a file. This makes is valuable for the beginner, and the later chapters contain information for the more advanced shell programmer.
I got this book at a time when the guy who wrote all our shell scripts quit without notice. This book was a lifesaver, as I had to write short (and not so short) shell scripts to automate certain tasks & understand the work he did.
I would like to see more discussion in Chapter 7 (Using Filters) about combining the use of sed and the Unix/Linux command tr. I find that I have to use these together sometimes as one does things the other can't handle. This is the only suggestion I have to improve an already useful book.
Rating:
Summary: A great book of script examples.
Review: A great book for learning shell scripting. It starts out with general syntax but then the rest of the book in filled with micro examples of things you need to write scripts, like input, output, prompting, changing case, manipulating strings, parsing and extracting data, finding file sizes, checking free space, setting screen echo on/off, read with a timeout, text substitution, doing math, here files, etc. There are also sections on portability, debugging, and common problems. I am very happy with this book and use it often when I am scripting.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best shell programming books I've read!
Review: Although I've been shell programming for years, I still learned a lot of new material from this book. Unlike Bill Rosenblatt's book, "Learning the Korn Shell", this book is extremely well thought out and presents subjects in a logical order. I would even recommend this book to people new to shell programming. In addition, unlike most of the other books I've read, ALL of the examples actually work! Mr. Blinn has even taken the time to make sure the examples will work on most every platform (Solaris, HP-UX, ULTRIX, ...). As the book states, we learn shell programming best by looking at examples of shell scripts. This book is a gold mine of examples which are practical and applicable to a System Administrator's every day job. They really help to reinforce some of the more advanced and/or cryptic shell programming features. Mr. Blinn also does an outstanding job of explaining each shell script in detail. He does not leave the reader guessing or confused. To be fair, I have to include the fact that the diskette which came with my book was blank. However, by following the instructions in the book I was able to download them from Prentice Hall's FTP site in less than 5 minutes.
Rating: 
Summary: need table of contents
Review: before I buy this book, I need to see the table of contents, could you please provide me the table of contents, Thanks
Rating:
Summary: Five stars for usefulness
Review: Bruce Blinn has written a very useful, highly practical shell programming book. I am working my way through the book but even after a chapter or two I have started to apply the priceless nuggets I was able to glean. If you work in a Un*x environment and need to script tedious tasks to allow you more time to get on with the fun stuff, then this will help you. It is well written and as easily understood as you can reasonably expect when you consider the arcane subject matter.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I bought this book more than 2 years ago and I have not been able to find another better book to displace it, except to supplement it. Korn is good, and so is Bash; but my boss is more impressed with speed of delivery on different systems ... from portability.
Rating:
Summary: Finally!
Review: I have been looking for a book like this for quite some time now, and FINALLY I have found it! If you are tired of jumbling syntax when changing from one shell to another (or from perl/tcl/etc scripting back to shell scripting) then this is the book for you! This book will also serve as a fine introduction to Bourne shell scripting for novices who learn best by example. All too often, authors present man-page-like syntax guides that contain all possible flags and switches (which can conflict with each other). Bruce Blinn uses real pieces of *working* code to illustrate the uses of the various components of a shell script. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Rating:
Summary: Finally!
Review: I have been looking for a book like this for quite some time now, and FINALLY I have found it! If you are tired of jumbling syntax when changing from one shell to another (or from perl/tcl/etc scripting back to shell scripting) then this is the book for you! This book will also serve as a fine introduction to Bourne shell scripting for novices who learn best by example. All too often, authors present man-page-like syntax guides that contain all possible flags and switches (which can conflict with each other). Bruce Blinn uses real pieces of *working* code to illustrate the uses of the various components of a shell script. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Rating: 
Summary: excellent
Review: If you've done any intoductory shell programming at all, this book will get you started in more serious shell programming efforts. I only gave this book 4 stars although it really deserves more, because it may not live up to the expectations of some readers. Only the Bourne shell is covered, because it's the most portable. It covers all the basics and many advanced issues. The authors philosphy is to teach by example, and this book is full of examples and sample code. The first half of the book is a down and dirty "How To by Example." The examples are general enough and well enough documented that the use for the syntaxes described remains clear in the readers mind. The second half of the book contains some sample shell utilities. These are shell programs that were written to mimmick or epxpand on functionality of common UNIX commands. I found the first half of the book to be the most useful over time. Some explanations may be a bit terse for brand new shell prgrammers. Awk is covered in much detail at all, although there are some very nice examples of using sed. All in all this is the best shell programming reference I've seen.
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