Learning the bash Shell

Cameron Newham lives in Perth, Western Australia. After completing a Bachelor of Science majoring in information technology and geography at the University of Western Australia, Cameron joined Universal Defence Systems (later to become Australian Defence Industries) as a software engineer. He has been with ADI for six years, working on various aspects of command and control systems. In his spare time Cameron can be found surfing the Internet, ballroom dancing, or driving his sports car. He also has more than a passing interest in space science, 3D graphics, synthesiser music, and Depeche Mode. Bill Rosenblatt is author of the the O'Reilly Nutshell Handbook(R) Learning the Korn Shell; co-author, with Deb Cameron, of Learning GNU Emacs; and a contributor to UNIX Power Tools. He is director of publishing systems at the Times Mirror Company in New York City and a columnist in SunWorld Online magazine on the World Wide Web. Bill received a B.S.E. from Princeton University and an M.S. and A.B.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, each in some variant of computer science. His interests in the computing field include multimedia databases, electronic publishing, and object- oriented systems. Outside of the computing field, he's interested in jazz, classical music, antique maps, and Sherlock Holmes pastiche novels. Bill lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He wishes his landlord allowed pets so that he could truthfully claim to have a dog and cat with suitably droll names like "Coltrane" and "Ravel."

• Preface 1. bash Basics What Is a Shell? Scope of This Book; History of UNIX Shells Getting bash Interactive Shell Use; Files Input and Output Background Jobs Special Characters and Quoting Help 2. Command-Line Editing Enabling Command-Line Editing The History List emacs Editing Mode; vi Editing Mode The fc Command History Expansion readline; Keyboard Habits 3. Customizing Your Environment; The .bash_profile, .bash_logout, and .bashrc Files Aliases; Options Shell Variables Customization and Subprocesses; Customization Hints 4. Basic Shell Programming Shell Scripts and Functions Shell Variables String Operators Command Substitution Advanced Examples: pushd and popd 5. Flow Control; if/else for case select while and until 6. Command-Line Options and Typed Variables Command-Line Options Typed Variables; Integer Variables and Arithmetic Arrays 7. Input/Output and Command-Line Processing I/O Redirectors String I/O Command-Line Processing 8. Process Handling Process IDs and Job Numbers Job Control Signals trap Coroutines Subshells; Process Substitution 9. Debugging Shell Programs Basic Debugging Aids A bash Debugger 10. bash Administration Installing bash as the Standard Shell Environment Customization System Security Features 11. Shell Scripting What's That Do? Starting Up; Potential Problems Don't Use bash 12. bash for Your System; Obtaining bash Unpacking the Archive What's in the Archive; Who Do I Turn to? A. Related Shells The Bourne Shell The IEEE 1003.2 POSIX Shell Standard The Korn Shell pdksh; zsh Shell Clones and Unix-like Platforms B. Reference Lists; Invocation Prompt String Customizations Built-In Commands and Reserved Words Built-In Shell Variables Test Operators; set Options shopt Options I/O Redirection emacs Mode Commands vi Control Mode Commands C. Loadable Built-Ins; D. Programmable Completion Index