Why you need Bash scripting basics
Shell scripts are an indispensable tool for any developer; even if you’re not writing scripts on a weekly basis, you’ll be reading them. In this chapter, we’ll cover the basics you need to know so that you feel comfortable when, for example:
- You’re confronted by a shell script that someone wrote a few years ago, for example “Can you check to see if we can reuse the automation scripts that Steve wrote before he left for Google?”
- You see an opportunity to write your own shell script, when you have a job that existing shell programs already solve (filtering, searching, sorting output, and feeding one program’s output into another one).
- You want to control precisely what goes into each Docker layer as you build up an image.
- You need to coordinate other software in the context of a Linux server’s operating system: startup ordering, error checking, aborting early between...