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Linux Shell Scripting Essentials

You're reading from   Linux Shell Scripting Essentials Learn shell scripting to solve complex shell-related problems and to efficiently automate your day-to-day tasks

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Product type Paperback
Published in Nov 2015
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781785284441
Length 282 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Tools
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Toc

Table of Contents (10) Chapters Close

Preface 1. The Beginning of the Scripting Journey FREE CHAPTER 2. Getting Hands-on with I/O, Redirection Pipes, and Filters 3. Effective Script Writing 4. Modularizing and Debugging 5. Customizing the Environment 6. Working with Files 7. Welcome to the Processes 8. Scheduling Tasks and Embedding Languages in Scripts Index

Modularizing your scripts


While writing a shell script, there is one stage when we feel that a shell script file has become too big to read and manage. To avoid such a scenario in our shell script, it is very important to keep the script modular.

In order to keep the script modular and maintainable, you can do the following:

  • Create functions instead of writing the same code again and again

  • Write a common set of functions and variables in a separate script and then source to use it

We have already seen how to define and use a function in Chapter 3, Effective Script Writing. Here, we will see how to divide a bigger script into smaller shell script modules and then use them by sourcing. In other words, we can say creating libraries in bash.

Source to a script file

Source is a shell built in command that reads and executes a script file in the current shell environment. If a script calls a source on another script file, all functions and variables available in that file will be loaded for use in calling...

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