Shell

Linux is today’s dominant Internet server platform. System administrators and Web developers need deep Linux fluency, including expert knowledge of shells and the command line. This is the only guide with everything you need to achieve that level of Linux mastery. Renowned Linux expert Mark Sobell has brought together comprehensive, insightful guidance on the tools sysadmins, developers, and power users need most, and has created an outstanding day-to-day reference, updated with assistance from new coauthor Matthew Helmke.

This title is 100 percent distribution and release agnostic. Packed with hundreds of high-quality, realistic examples, it presents Linux from the ground up: the clearest explanations and most useful information about everything from filesystems to shells, editors to utilities, and programming tools to regular expressions.

Use a Mac? You’ll find coverage of the macOS command line, including macOS-only tools and utilities that other Linux/UNIX titles ignore.

A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, Fourth Edition, is the only guide to deliver

• A MariaDB chapter to get you started with this ubiquitous relational database management system (RDBMS)
• A masterful introduction to Python for system administrators and power users
• In-depth coverage of the bash and tcsh shells, including a complete discussion of environment, inheritance, and process locality, plus coverage of basic and advanced shell programming
• Practical explanations of core utilities, from aspell to xargs, including printf and sshfs/curlftpfs, PLUS macOS—specific utilities from ditto to SetFile
• Expert guidance on automating remote backups using rsync
• Dozens of system security tips, including step-by-step walkthroughs of implementing secure communications using ssh and scp
• Tips and tricks for customizing the shell, including step values, sequence expressions, the eval builtin, and implicit command-line continuation
• High-productivity editing techniques using vim and emacs
• A comprehensive, 300-plus-page command reference section covering 102 utilities, including find, grep, sort, and tar
• Instructions for updating systems using apt-get and dnf
• And much more, including coverage of BitTorrent, gawk, sed, find, sort, bzip2, and regular expressions

Take your Linux skills to the next level! Whether you're a system administrator, software developer, site reliability engineer, or enthusiastic hobbyist, this practical, hands-on book will help you work faster, smarter, and more efficiently. You'll learn how to create and run complex commands that solve real business problems, process and retrieve information, and automate manual tasks.

You'll also truly understand what happens behind the shell prompt, so no matter which commands you run, you can be more successful in everyday Linux use and more competitive on the job market.

As you build intermediate to advanced command-line skills, you'll learn how to:

• Choose or construct commands that get your work done quickly
• Run commands efficiently and navigate the Linux filesystem with ease
• Build powerful, complex commands out of simpler ones
• Transform text files and query them like databases to achieve business goals
• Control Linux point-and-click features from the command line

The Linux Command Line takes you from your very first terminal keystrokes to writing full programs in Bash, the most popular Linux shell (or command line). Along the way you'll learn the timeless skills handed down by generations of experienced, mouse-shunning gurus: file navigation, environment configuration, command chaining, pattern matching with regular expressions, and more.

In addition to that practical knowledge, author William Shotts reveals the philosophy behind these tools and the rich heritage that your desktop Linux machine has inherited from Unix supercomputers of yore.

As you make your way through the book's short, easily-digestible chapters, you'll learn how to:

• Create and delete files, directories, and symlinks
• Administer your system, including networking, package installation, and process management
• Use standard input and output, redirection, and pipelines
• Edit files with Vi, the world's most popular text editor
• Write shell scripts to automate common or boring tasks
• Slice and dice text files with cut, paste, grep, patch, and sed

Once you overcome your initial "shell shock," you'll find that the command line is a natural and expressive way to communicate with your computer. Just don't be surprised if your mouse starts to gather dust.

"For those looking to master the Linux command line and get an essential understand of the core Linux command line tools, this book is a highly effective and useful guide." —Ben Rothke, RSA Conference

Shell scripts are an efficient way to interact with your machine and manage your files and system operations. With just a few lines of code, your computer will do exactly what you want it to do. But you can also use shell scripts for many other essential (and not-so-essential) tasks.

This second edition of Wicked Cool Shell Scripts offers a collection of useful, customizable, and fun shell scripts for solving common problems and personalizing your computing environment. Each chapter contains ready-to-use scripts and explanations of how they work, why you’d want to use them, and suggestions for changing and expanding them. You’ll find a mix of classic favorites, like a disk backup utility that keeps your files safe when your system crashes, a password manager, a weather tracker, and several games, as well as 23 brand-new scripts, including:

• A ZIP code lookup tool that reports the city and state
• A Bitcoin address information retriever
• A suite of tools for working with cloud services like Dropbox and iCloud
• Tools for renaming and applying commands to files in bulk
• Image processing and editing tools

Whether you want to save time managing your system or just find new ways to goof off, these scripts are wicked cool!