Rating: 
Summary: I should have read the reviews.
Review: A helpful programming book can take one of two forms: a well structured reference or an insightful tutorial. This book is neither. The index lacks key entries, and the examples are taken from the man pages. I regret not getting other people's opinion on the book before I bought it.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible Examples
Review: Clearly, the authors have not verified the examples they provided in the book. When I ran the example scripts, frequently I would encounter mistakes here and there. It is rather annoying to have such a stupid problem when you try to understand the presented concepts or convention.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible Examples
Review: Clearly, the authors have not verified the examples they provided in the book. When I ran the example scripts, frequently I would encounter mistakes here and there. It is rather annoying to have such a stupid problem when you try to understand the presented concepts or convention.
Rating: 
Summary: Syntax Reference is perfect
Review: First I have been using this book for about 6 months. I have found myself back in the unix world, and no other book have I found with the syntax I was looking for. If your looking for an excellent reference book, THIS IS IT. If your looking for a more basic HOW-TO book, I recommend IDIOTS DELIGHT. nuff said.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the shell?
Review: I don't like reading negative reviews. However this one is necessary as a warning. I was not being facetious, when I asked where is the shell? Anybody that would give this more than one star has only read the cover. And does not know that csh and c are two different things. For that matter the author does not know the CSH and c are two different things. Lowell Jay Arthur and Ted Barnes probably could not afford a computer between the two of them. There are absolutely no examples of this csh, or the tcsh shell, or the posix shell, or any industry used shells. In deviating from shells, they talk about CGI as if it was a language instead of a protocol. They have examples of Netscape the way it looked when there was Windows 3.1. I stand corrected; they are gracious to say that the "C-Shell "provides an excellent pseudocode for C the in Chapter 13. Perhaps they must have read that somewhere. I am sending this book back. If you really intend on C programming: Unix Shell Programming (Hayden Books Unix System Library) by Stephen G. Kochan, Patrick H. Wood (Contributor) ISBN: 067248448X
Rating:
Summary: Where's the shell?
Review: I don't like reading negative reviews. However this one is necessary as a warning. I was not being facetious, when I asked where is the shell? Anybody that would give this more than one star has only read the cover. And does not know that csh and c are two different things. For that matter the author does not know the CSH and c are two different things. Lowell Jay Arthur and Ted Barnes probably could not afford a computer between the two of them. There are absolutely no examples of this csh, or the tcsh shell, or the posix shell, or any industry used shells. In deviating from shells, they talk about CGI as if it was a language instead of a protocol. They have examples of Netscape the way it looked when there was Windows 3.1. I stand corrected; they are gracious to say that the "C-Shell "provides an excellent pseudocode for C the in Chapter 13. Perhaps they must have read that somewhere. I am sending this book back. If you really intend on C programming: Unix Shell Programming (Hayden Books Unix System Library) by Stephen G. Kochan, Patrick H. Wood (Contributor) ISBN: 067248448X
Rating:
Summary: Well, *I* think it's a great book!
Review: I don't understand all the negative reviews here. Perhaps they're expecting something else out of this book: intro to programming, or hello world or something. Yes, it's a fairly advanced book, but that's what I wanted in the first place! I am writing this review because I came to this page to buy another copy of this book: I keep wanting a copy at home for hacking on my Linux box! Any basic tutorial can show you how to do basic if/then/else and loops and basic syntax rules. You need a book when you want to do something harder: mathematics, complicated scripts, etc. Best of all, it doesn't just cover Bourne and C shells: it also covers the Korn and Bourne Again shells (ksh & bash). This is not one of those books that was hacked out in four weeks because Technology X just became hot and every book publisher on the planet is scrambling to spit out 1600-page shelf-benders. The authors have taken a lot of time to put together a truly useful book. Books don't reach a fourth edition if they are so bad!
Rating: 
Summary: Was the third edition better?
Review: I haven't seen the 4th edition, but I do have the third edition, and found it extremely useful when I was learning how to write shell scripts. I spent a lot of time looking for books on shell programming, and settled on this one. It provides an introduction to shell and unix for novices, and has lots of examples as it develops into more advanced techniques. Overall, I found it was quite clear, easy to read and even useful as a reference when I needed to figure out how to do something.
Rating:
Summary: Was the third edition better?
Review: I haven't seen the 4th edition, but I do have the third edition, and found it extremely useful when I was learning how to write shell scripts. I spent a lot of time looking for books on shell programming, and settled on this one. It provides an introduction to shell and unix for novices, and has lots of examples as it develops into more advanced techniques. Overall, I found it was quite clear, easy to read and even useful as a reference when I needed to figure out how to do something.
Rating: 
Summary: UNIX Shell is a power tool for programmers
Review: I learned UNIX and Shell at Bell Labs in the 1970s. I found it was a rapid prototyping tool, a personal assistant, and a way to be more productive. The power of Shell is the ability to try out ideas quickly, rapidly converging on solutions. Then you can decide whether to code it in another language or just leave it in shell. This book focuses on applied shell programming, not specific tools like grep or awk, but how to compose programming tools and application software quickly and easily. Discover the Power of Unix Shell.
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