Chapter 1. Crash Course in Bash

The primary purpose of this chapter is to give you enough knowledge about the Linux shell/Bash to get you up and running, as that the remainder of the book will just fall into place.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Getting started with Bash and CLI fundamentals
• Creating and using basic variables
• Hidden Bash variables and reserved words
• Conditional logic using if, else, and elseif
• Case/switch statements and loop constructs
• Using functions and parameters
• Including source files
• Parsing program input parameters
• Standard in, standard out, and standard error
• Linking commands using pipes
• Finding more information about the commands used within Bash

Note

This chapter will set you up with the basic knowledge needed to complete the recipes in the remaining chapters of the book.