Book Review - Shell Scripting Recipes by Chris F. A. Johnson
Category Book Reviews
I'm a strong believer in "R&D"... "Rob & Duplicate". Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'd prefer find code that works and use/modify it to fit my purposes. Chris F. A. Johnson has a book that fits that mindset perfectly... Shell Scripting Recipes - A Problem-Solution Approach (Apress).
Chapter List: The POSIX Shell and Command-Line Utilities; Playing With Files - Viewing, Manipulating, And Editing Text Files; String Briefs; What's In A Word?; Scripting By Numbers; Loose Names Sink Scripts - Bringing Sanity To Filenames; Treading A Righteous PATH; The Dating Game; Good Housekeeping - Monitoring And Tidying Up File Systems; POP Goes The E-Mail; PostScript - More Than An Afterthought; Screenplay - The screen-funcs Library; Backing Up The Drive; Aging, Archiving, And Deleting Files; Covering All Your Databases; Home On The Web; Taking Care Of Business; Random Acts Of Scripting; A Smorgasbord Of Scripts; Script Development Management; Internet Scripting Resources; Index
Johnson has written a book that is perfect for the person who has studied the basics and now wants to start applying their knowledge. The book is one page after another of scripts written to solve specific issues and scenarios that can be solved using scripting techniques. Each problem has the format of description, "How It Works", "Usage", "The Script", and any "Notes" that might apply to this situation. The vast majority of problems are covered in two or less pages, so the scripts and examples are very tight and concise. The scripts were tested by the author using bash, pdksh, KornShell 93, and ash. If this is the type and flavor of shell scripting you use, they you'll be able to use the scripts without too many fears of finding problems. If the author knows another technique to make the script applicable to more types of shell environments, those will be noted in the Notes for the particular problem.
I really liked the focused nature of the material and writing. This is the type of book that will either solve a specific problem you have or will give you ideas on automating/simplifying something that you've lived with for far too long. And with repeated perusals, you may find gems you overlooked the first time that now address a current need. Definitely the type of book that deserves to be on your bookshelf with dog-eared pages throughout.
I'm a strong believer in "R&D"... "Rob & Duplicate". Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'd prefer find code that works and use/modify it to fit my purposes. Chris F. A. Johnson has a book that fits that mindset perfectly... Shell Scripting Recipes - A Problem-Solution Approach (Apress).
Chapter List: The POSIX Shell and Command-Line Utilities; Playing With Files - Viewing, Manipulating, And Editing Text Files; String Briefs; What's In A Word?; Scripting By Numbers; Loose Names Sink Scripts - Bringing Sanity To Filenames; Treading A Righteous PATH; The Dating Game; Good Housekeeping - Monitoring And Tidying Up File Systems; POP Goes The E-Mail; PostScript - More Than An Afterthought; Screenplay - The screen-funcs Library; Backing Up The Drive; Aging, Archiving, And Deleting Files; Covering All Your Databases; Home On The Web; Taking Care Of Business; Random Acts Of Scripting; A Smorgasbord Of Scripts; Script Development Management; Internet Scripting Resources; Index
Johnson has written a book that is perfect for the person who has studied the basics and now wants to start applying their knowledge. The book is one page after another of scripts written to solve specific issues and scenarios that can be solved using scripting techniques. Each problem has the format of description, "How It Works", "Usage", "The Script", and any "Notes" that might apply to this situation. The vast majority of problems are covered in two or less pages, so the scripts and examples are very tight and concise. The scripts were tested by the author using bash, pdksh, KornShell 93, and ash. If this is the type and flavor of shell scripting you use, they you'll be able to use the scripts without too many fears of finding problems. If the author knows another technique to make the script applicable to more types of shell environments, those will be noted in the Notes for the particular problem.
I really liked the focused nature of the material and writing. This is the type of book that will either solve a specific problem you have or will give you ideas on automating/simplifying something that you've lived with for far too long. And with repeated perusals, you may find gems you overlooked the first time that now address a current need. Definitely the type of book that deserves to be on your bookshelf with dog-eared pages throughout.
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