Master Linux Shells – Your Complete Guide to Practical Success with Bash, Zsh, PowerShell

Key Features

• Embrace Bash, Zsh, and PowerShell across Linux, macOS, Unix
• Seamlessly progress through chapters with conceptual explanations, illustrative examples, and immersive labs for hands-on skill development
• Build real-world Linux administration scripts, enhancing your troubleshooting and management skills

Book Description

Embark on a comprehensive journey through command shells with this hands-on manual. While Bash is a Linux staple, Z shell and PowerShell are rising stars, applicable to Linux, macOS, and Unix. Progress seamlessly through chapters, each building on the last, creating a solid foundation. Learn through a unique approach: concepts, examples, and interactive labs. These labs, nearly a hundred strong, form the core of experiential learning, essential for script creation.

Focusing on Linux commands and their scripting applications, this manual is universally relevant across Linux and select Unix-like systems. It goes beyond theory, offering practical scripts for real-world Linux administration. Scripts are designed for manageability, aiding learning and troubleshooting. The goal is to nurture the ability to craft intelligent, functional shell scripts.

While centered on Bash, this book offers a peek into the future with Z Shell and PowerShell, expanding your skills and adaptability. This book is systematically structured and engaging so that it will guide you to master command shells, equipping you for real-world Linux challenges.

What you will learn

• Grasp the concept of shells and explore their diverse types for varied system interactions
• Master redirection, pipes, and compound commands for efficient shell operations
• Leverage text stream filters within scripts for dynamic data manipulation
• Harness functions and build libraries to create modular and reusable shell scripts
• Explore the basic programming constructs that apply to all programming languages
• Engineer portable shell scripts, ensuring compatibility across diverse platforms beyond Linux

Who this book is for

This book is for programmers who use the command line on Unix and Linux servers already, but don’t write primarily in Bash. This book is ideal for programmers who’ve been using a scripting language such as Python, JavaScript or PHP, and would like to understand and use Bash more effectively. It’s also great for beginning programmers, who want to learn programming concepts.

Table of Contents

1. Shell Basics
2. Interpreting Commands
3. Understanding Variables and Pipelines
4. Understanding Input/Output Redirection
5. Customizing the Environment
6. Text Stream Filters – Part 1
7. Text Stream Filters – Part 2
8. Basic Shell Script Construction
9. Filtering Text with grep, sed, and Regular Expressions
10. Understanding Functions
11. Performing Mathematical Operations
12. Creating here Documents
13. Scripting with ImageMagick
14. Shell Scripting for Security Professionals
15. Using awk–Part 1
16. Using awk–Part 2
17. Creating User Interfaces with yad and dialog
18. Using Shell Script Options with getops and shift
19. Shell Script Security
20. Shell Script Portability
21. Debugging Shell Scripts
22. Using PowerShell on Linux