Table of Contents

Preface. Chapter 1. bash Basics What Is a Shell? Scope of This Book History of UNIX Shells Getting bash Interactive Shell Use Files Input and Output Background Jobs Special Characters and Quoting Help. Chapter 2. Command-Line Editing The History File emacs Editing Mode vi Editing Mode The fc Command History Expansion readline Keyboard Habits. Chapter 3. Customizing Your Environment The .bash_profile, .bash_logout, and .bashrc Files Aliases Options Shell Variables Customization and Subprocesses Customization Hints. Chapter 4. Basic Shell Programming Shell Scripts and Functions Shell Variables String Operators Command Substitution Advanced Examples: pushd and popd. Chapter 5. Flow Control if/else for case select while and until. Chapter 6. Command-Line Options and Typed Variables Command-Line Options Typed Variables Integer Variables and Arithmetic Arrays. Chapter 7. Input/Output and Command-Line Processing I/O Redirectors String I/O Command-Line Processing. Chapter 8. Process Handling Process IDs and Job Numbers Job Control Signals trap Coroutines Subshells Process Substitution. Chapter 9. Debugging Shell Programs Basic Debugging Aids A bash Debugger. Chapter 10. bash Administration Installing bash as the Standard Shell Environment Customization System Security Features. Chapter 11. bash for Your System Obtaining bash Unpacking the Archive What's in the Archive Who Do I Turn to? Appendix A. Related Shells. Appendix B. Reference Lists. Appendix C. Loadable Built-Ins. Appendix D. Syntax Appendix. E. Obtaining Sample Programs. Index.

About the Author

Cameron Newham is an information technology developer living in the United Kingdom. After completing a Bachelor of Science majoring in information technology and geography at the University of Western Australia, Cameron worked for Australian Defence Industries for seven years. He is now an IT contractor based in London. In his spare time Cameron can be found surfing the Internet or working on his project to document buildings of architectural interest in England. He also has more than a passing interest in space science, 3D graphics, synthesizer music, and Depeche Mode. Bill Rosenblatt is author of the the O'Reilly Nutshell Handbook(R) Learning the Korn Shell; coauthor, with Deb Cameron, of Learning GNU Emacs; and a contributor to UNIX Power Tools. He is director of publishing systems at the Times Mirror Company in New York City and a columnist in SunWorld Online magazine on the World Wide Web. Bill received a B.S.E. from Princeton University and an M.S. and A.B.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, each in some variant of computer science. His interests in the computing field include multimedia databases, electronic publishing, and object-oriented systems. Outside of the computing field, he's interested in jazz, classical music, antique maps, and Sherlock Holmes pastiche novels. Bill lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He wishes his landlord allowed pets so that he could truthfully claim to have a dog and cat with suitably droll names like "Coltrane" and "Ravel."