Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook, Second Edition: Don't neglect the shell – this book will empower you to use simple commands to perform complex tasks. Whether you're a casual or advanced Linux user, the cookbook approach makes it all so brilliantly accessible and, above all, useful. , Second Edition

I have started using Linux in 2000 with Suse Linux. Coming from Windows Linux right away took my interest especially the tremendous freedom it gives you and the ability to operate the system instead of being operated by the system. But if you want to get into the depth of Linux and being an expert the learning curve especially when starting is quite steep and the huge amount of possibilities is hard to tackle. But if you go over this hurdle than you get rewarded with the knowledge of how to rule your computer. You can do it the hard way as I did when starting with Linux by asking Google for each and every question coming up. But if you want to accelerate to get into understanding and using Linux not only on the surface than this book is for you.The book is precisely focused on shell scripting and is therefore always right to the point. So you won't find information on how to install Linux but as this is one of the easier parts you can find a lot of good information on the internet and nowadays setting up a Linux machine is quite easy.If you have Linux installed this book helps you to jump right into the topic. In the introduction of chapter 1 you get the basics about the shell environment you need just enough to start scripting. For example it is explained what does the prompt look like, the structure of a shell script and how to start it. And some handy information to avoid unnecessary typing using the history.After the introduction of each chapter the book starts with recipes. Each recipe is introduced with a short objective of a recipe and then it has more or less always the same structure. Getting ready gives a brief overview of the commands and syntax used in the following sections. How to do it shows how the commands are used that support the objective. The explanation is done on practical and real life examples that can be used in your day to day work. In some recipes you get also deeper information in the But there is more section that can be skipped at a first read and referenced later when topic comes up in combination with other recipes.As this book's title denotes the content is presented as a cookbook. In a cookbook you can assume to jump into a specific topic and than just program along. But I would recommend before starting to read the first chapter as it explains all basic elements of a shell script like variable assignment, arrays, functions and other programming structures as well as debugging tools and strategies. After chapter 1 you have enough information to tackle the recipes in following chapters.Chapter 2 and chapter 3 provide a comprehensive set of recipes on file manipulation. Chapter 2 is more focused on recipes you will need in your day to day work, like finding, copying and moving files. Chapter 3 has more sophisticated recipes like file comparison to find out the differences between two files.Chapter 4 is about the content of files, that is finding and manipulating the content of a file. The chapter starts with an introduction into regular expressions and some often used patterns like e-mail address validation are provided.Especially interesting to me was chapter 5 which goes beyond the Linux operating system but shows how to use shell scripting for accessing the web. I liked the recipe about cURL, a very sophisticated and comprehensive tool for accessing the web through a lot of different web protocols. This recipe gives you a kick start into cURL with the commands you will use 80% of your time when down or uploading files from or to the web or another file system.The book does not only cover topics you would need as a regular Linux user but also provides recipes for administration tasks. And from my experience the book covers the main commands that you would need to administer your private Linux home network to keep it up and running. The chapters 6, 8 and 9 cover backup tools, tools for monitoring you system and manipulating or running automatically scheduled processes with cron jobs.And finally chapter 7 has a lot to say about setting up a network. The topics cover file transfer between computers or logging in to remote computers using ssh.If you are a programmer of a programming language that uses a lot the Linux shell like Python, Ruby or Ruby on Rails than I also can recommend this book. It covers the topics you will need when mainly working with the console and not using an IDE. Especially useful I consider in this regard the topics how to find files, how to compare files, how to find a specific content of a file that you need to refactor. SSH without login is also very useful when working with Ruby on Rails and administrating an application server like passenger. Also the brief introduction into Git serves as a good start into managing and archiving your source files like the scripts you generate based on the knowledge gained from the book. The section finding broken links on a web site is very helpful when working as a web developer.So all in all this book is a very helpful companion whether you are using Linux as a regular user or as an administrator. And if you are a developer you find a lot of valuable commands and recipes that make your programming life easier. It is a book you should have handy when you are one of the above mentioned users to make your life easier with Linux.

This is one of the best books I have read on Linux scripting. Shantanu, has a straight to the point no fluff writing style. It was straight forward and I was able to read this book in two days because of it. It felt good not having to waste my time with page "filler's" as I have done with most technical books. I commend Shantanu on his efforts and I hope that other ( IT) technical writers take note.

Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook by Shantanu Tushar and Sarath Lakshman is a book that will get beginners of the Linux shell up to speed quickly. Being a cookbook style book a user can bounce around pretty much at will to get their task completed without relying on having read previous recipes.The reader will find basic admin type one-liners, in addition to some interesting recipes such as how to access your gmail account and sending tweets from the command line.Overall this is a well written book and something every beginning Linux admin (or power user) will want to have in their collection.

I just finished "Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook" (Second Edition) by Shantanu Tushar and Sarath Lakshman. This is a beginner's guide to using shell scripting (bash) on linux.Usually, a "cookbook" is set up more like a series of projects organized around a set of themes, and is usually less introductory than this book. "Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook" might be better titled "Introduction to Linux Shell Scripting" because it is more like a tutorial and a how too book than like a cookbook. Nonetheless, it is an excellent tutorial that includes over 100 "recipes" that address a diversity of applications. It's just that they are organized more like a tutorial. What this means is that a beginner can use only the resources in this book and get results. The various recipes are organized in an order that brings the reader through basics (like how to use the terminal, how to mess with environment variables, etc.) then on to more complex topics such as regular expressions, manipulating text, accessing web pages, and archiving. One very nice set of scripts that is not often found in intro books addresses networking. The book also covers MySQL database use.All of the scripts are available from the publisher in a well organized zip archive.I read the e-version of the book, in iBooks, but the PDF version is very nice as well. I don't know how this would translate as at Kindle book. But, importantly (and this may be more common now than not) the ebook uses all text, unlike some earlier versions of ebooks that used photographs of key text snippets as graphics which essentially renders them useless. Of course, copy and paste from a ebook is difficult, and that is where the zip file of scrips comes in. You can open the PDF file, get the zip archive, and as you read through examples simply open up (or copy and paste) the scripts from the zip archive and modify or run them. Also, the ebook is cheaper than a paper edition and clearly takes up way less space!If I was going to recommend a starting out guide to shell scripting this is the book I'd recommend right now. It is well organized and well executed.

This is one of the best Linux books I've studied in the last year - and i've studied several. This book will give you the hacker buzz. If you have had at least some exposure to Linux, and want a better understanding of the command line and shell scripting in particular, then get this book!I had my doubts, but the first two chapters are pure gold. And there's one teasure after another throughout the whole book. Absolutely insightful...and it makes a perfect reference for looking up various commands and getting the essential information on how to use them quickly, showing things by example. Commands like "xargs" have never been presented in a meaningful way to me before; the authors do this for all the essential commands.And along the way, shell scripting will just sneaks in there. Before you know it, you're jamming! Fantastic treatment on a variety of topics that anyone with a computer background will recognize and can leverage or exploit...potentially, of course. The more background you have with Linux, the more you'll love this book.