Rating: 
Summary: Excellent single volume coverage of the shell options...
Review: (This is a review of the 4th edition)
As I start playing around more with Linux, I'd like to get into some shell programming. After reviewing Unix Shells By Example (4th Edition) by Ellie Quigley (Prentice-Hall), I think I've found the book I need to get started.
Chapter List: Introduction to UNIX/Linux Shells; Shell Programming QuickStart; Regular Expressions and Pattern Matching; The grep Family; sed, The Streamlined Editor; The awk Utility; The Interactive Bourne Shell; Programming The Bourne Shell; The Interactive C And TC Shells; Programming The C And TC Shells; The Interactive Korn Shell; Programming The Korn Shell; The Interactive Bash Shell; Programming The Bash Shell; Debugging Shell Scripts; The System Administrator And The Shell; Useful UNIX/Linux Utilities For Shell Programmers; Comparison Of The Shells; Index
I know that there are a number of different shell scripting platforms, but I really don't know enough to understand what is different between them. In a single book, Quigley covers all the options so I can start to make some decisions about what direction I'd like to go in. And regardless of whatever choice that might be, she covers all the different platforms in equal depth so I don't have to go out and buy another book to get started. Each chapter is filled with a number of examples, immediately followed by an explanation of how the example works. So not only do you have the benefit of reference material on how something like the grep utility works, but you also have the benefit of seeing working examples in order to translate theory into practical knowledge. Her style of writing is clear and concise, and I really think that with a little time on my part, this book will take me well down the road to where I want to be.
An excellent choice if you're looking to get into command line scripting of your UNIX or Linux systems...
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Necessary
Review: I cannot imagine anyone tryng to learn UNIX shell scripting without this book. I've used this book countless times to teach shell scripting to programmers and neophytes alike. Plenty of books provide shell script examples, but none give such thorough, line-by-line explanations of what the examples are doing.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Necessary
Review: I cannot imagine anyone tryng to learn UNIX shell scripting without this book. I've used this book countless times to teach shell scripting to programmers and neophytes alike. Plenty of books provide shell script examples, but none give such thorough, line-by-line explanations of what the examples are doing.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for beginngers as well as advanced users
Review: I have been working with shells since about 5 years, and besides the "man" pages, this book has been the only one I ever used when writing shell scripts.I rarely comment on books, but I really felt this one needs my appreciation. The highlights of this book in my opinion are:
- a large and very well index--it really helps you finding your answer quickly
- very good introduction to shells and environments
- very good introduction to regular expressions
- very good introductions to the very important utilities grep, sed, and awk
- detailed sections with many examples for interactive usage of shells as well as programming shell scripts For many people the sections on the c shell, korn shell and TC shell may seem unnecessary, since (I assume) the majority is using the bash shell. However, some things in those sections apply to the bash shell as well, and besides that one never knows which shell one has to work with one day--so by having it all in one book, you should be set. Last but not least I would like to add that there is no need for reading this book from start to finish, you can just jumpt right into any section, as I have always done ;) Get this book if you want a great all-round book on shells, and should you still get stuck, type "man ..."
Rating:
Summary: Great book for beginngers as well as advanced users
Review: I would recommend this book to each and every individual who is planning to learn Shell Scripting, AWK, GREP and SED. This is the book for learning these tools. I tried 3 different books but this book has helped me the most in not only clearing my concepts but making me almost an expert in these tools.... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BOOK!!!
Rating:
Summary: Best syntax reference for shells
Review: I'm a unix system admin, and I use this book on a regular basis. It solves the problem of remembering the syntax from one shell to another. The text uses examples to teach you how to do command line and scripting in bourne, korn and c shells. I found it to be very straight forward, and I can flip to the section I need and have the example right there to put into my script. I have little yellow sticky notes all through this book on the references I use the most. I recommend it to all my system administrator colleagues, and it's a must for newbies to understand what's going on with their shells. She also has a Perl by Example book that works the same way.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent examples demonstrate important concepts.
Review: I've been a unix sysadmin for over 5 years and am learning lots from this book. The author has a knack of teaching by providing examples that show exactly how a command / process works without jargon or oversimplification. I'm clearly understanding things (like regular expressions) that I frequently used casually, but didn't know exactly how they worked and why they sometimes didn't.
Highly recommended for a range of experience levels!
Rating:
Summary: thorough treatment from the beginning
Review: I've looked at a lot of books about UNIX as a beginner in shell programming, and have found none so helpful as this one. Clear, thorough, well written; useful appendices.
Rating:
Summary: The best Unix Shell book I've ever read!
Review: If want to learn about shells and you learn by example, like I do, this book is essential.
The first 6 chapters (nearly 200 pages) goes over the basics of all shells; what they are, what they do, what programs are most used to manipulate data in them. There are whole chapters devoted to grep, sed and awk, and the author doesn't skimp on details. You will be a virtual grep/sed/awk guru by the time you learn everything in these chapters.
Chapters 7-15 introduce and get you into scripting of each major shell: Bourne shell, C and TC Shells, Korn shell, and Bash (bash is the standard shell in most linux distributions). It then spends a chapter on general debugging shell scripting problems.
The last chapters touch upon system administrating via the shell (rather than using gui tools). Again taught by example so it's very clear to the reader.
I learned more about bash (my shell of choice) from this guide than any other that I've read, and not for lack of trying, I've read several bash guides. I was happy to see that examples given were explained line-by-line so you don't lose track of what is happening in each example. I was delighted by the useful appendices covering useful commands and giving side by side shell comparisons.
This is my favorite shell book to date.
Rating:
Summary: Great reference, but with some errors
Review: This book is awesome. I am a command-line Unix geek by trade, but hadn't written a line of programming of any kind since BASIC in high school. I sat down with this book and, with the help of a few Google searches, was writing solid Korn Shell scripts in a week. With this book I was able to write an awk routine (my first one ever) that cut a job one of my co-workers was doing from 3 hours down to five minutes. I would recommend this as a must-have if you learn to do stuff by example. If you are looking for an O'Reilly-type desk reference, this is not your book. I have one MAJOR gripe about this book, the index is very sloppy for information contained in the last 1/4 of the book, it looks like the index didn't get updated right after and edit....
| 
