Mastering Unix Shell Scripting

by Randal K. Michael

Book Overview

Provides readers with end-to-end shell scripts that can be used to automate repetitive tasks and solve real-world system administration problems Targets the specific command structure for four popular UNIX systems: Solaris, Linux, AIX, and HP-UX Illustrates dozens of example tasks, presenting the proper command syntax and analyzing the performance gain or loss using various control structure techniques Web site includes all the shell scripts used...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471218219
• ISBN13: 9780471218210
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 704 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 7.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

You will use Google to fill in the blanks, but this is a great book

Thank goodness for this book. It's a big, 3" thick book, that's more of a reference guide to do a bunch of really useful tasks. Example, you "could" start at page 1, but there's no point. Check the TOC or Appendix, pick what you want to learn, and just go directly to it. I'm not as versed in other Unix areas as I'd like to be, thus why I got the book, but it does seem to have a good examples of what's going to work w/ one shell vs. another. It's helped my career out in a big way. Heh, I mean, just tucking my shirt in and carrying a big 3" thick book around makes me appear smart. :-) "Dude, look at that 'Shell scripting' book, it's big, and he has his shirt tucked in today, he means business". Yeah buddy, you got that straight! I don't think this is for beginners, like me, it doesn't "explain" a lot of what you're doing, at least in the detail that my cat-like brain needs, but hey, that's what Google's for. What it does give the beginner, is lots of questions to take else where, and I learned from those other areas. Example, I joined "unix.com's" forums because of this book, there I met a bunch of people that are so insanely smart, it's "insane", (seriously, how in the world do people know this stuff? One of the coolest websites I've been to was "nobodyisbornwithlinuxknowledge.com", or something like that). It also gives us beginners the concept behind what it's doing, therefore, you're now smart enough to ask the mighty oracle called "Google" the right question, to get the right answer. I love this book, period, and I hate 3" books, particularly 3" books that are of a technical content. The information in this book is very valuable, moreso, it encouraged me to spread out to other areas, and it opened me up, to the open source world. Am I a scripting genius w/ this book in my hands, no, did I write 3 scripts w/in a month that is going to save my group a lot of money and man power, yes, yes yes! Did it make this lazy man's job easier, oh my yes. ... I love this book, and I'm a beginner, w/ his shirt tucked in now, (well at least Mon-Wed). :-)

WOW...You will love this book!

This book is great! I Recently landed a job as a Systems Administrator (Solaris), and I needed to know how to script. With little scripting experience (and me not wanting to loose the job of my dreams); I picked this book up. All I can say is WOW. What a GREAT book. It describes step by step what to do, how it's done and why it's done. Although it's exclusively KSH, it does have the same script written in different formats so that it works with Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and other Unicies. This book assumes that you know SOME basic scripting skills. Beginners would have to learn some basic scripting and (more importantly) understand the concept besides the actual command(s). I recommend this book for, nonetheless, to everyone who wants/needs to script. Happy scripting!

Highly recommended

I thought the book was excellent. Each example program is thoroughly explained. The example programs are very useful and well written. The examples will work for the most common Unix variants. A library of functions are provided that can be used to build more complex programs. I am a seasoned system administrator with a lot of programming experience but I have a limited amount of experience with Unix and AIX. This book helped me get up-to-speed with common system administration tasks such as resource monitoring and notification.

Excellent Book...

This is one of the best books on Unix shell scripting I have ever read. I immediately put a few of the scripts to work in our Solaris production environment. Be warned though; this book focuses entirely on the Korn shell. If you plan to write scripts using the Bourne, BASH, or C-shell you should find another book.

It made money for me.

I'm shell scripting pretty good. But I had to write a script for a customer to extract some drive statistics and another to hide some passwords from a log that I had no control over... I was kinda shaking over it.However, this is a moderate to advanced book which showed me how to find what I was looking for. There aren't that many advanced books on shell scripting. It has many good real world examples. Two guys from my office bought their own. And best of all... It made me money!! Yes, It's worth your time and your money.