Book Image

Mastering Linux Shell Scripting

By : Andrew Mallett
Book Image

Mastering Linux Shell Scripting

By: Andrew Mallett

Overview of this book

Shell scripting is a quick method to prototype a complex application or a problem by automating tasks when working on Linux-based systems. Using both simple one-line commands and command sequences complex problems can be solved with ease, from text processing to backing up sysadmin tools. In this book, you’ll discover everything you need to know to master shell scripting and make informed choices about the elements you employ. Get to grips with the fundamentals of creating and running a script in normal mode, and in debug mode. Learn about various conditional statements' code snippets, and realize the power of repetition and loops in your shell script. Implement functions and edit files using the Stream Editor, script in Perl, program in Python – as well as complete coverage of other scripting languages to ensure you can choose the best tool for your project.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
15
Index

Understanding the basics of sed


Having built a little foundation, we can now start to look at some of the operations of sed. The commands will be supplied with most Linux systems and are core commands.

We will dive directly into some simple examples:

$ sed 'p' /etc/passwd

The p operator will print the matched pattern. In this case, we have not specified a pattern so we will match everything. Printing the matched lines without suppressing STDOUT will duplicate lines. The result of this operation is to print all the lines in the passwd file twice. To suppress STDOUT, we use the -n option:

$ sed -n 'p' /etc/passwd

Brilliant!!We have just reinvented the cat command. We can now specifically work with just a range of lines:

$ sed -n '1,3 p ' /etc/passwd

Now we have reinvented the head command, but we can also specify the range in an RE to recreate the grep command:

$ sed -n '/^root/ p' /etc/passwd

We can see this demonstrated in the following screenshot:

Substituting command

We have seen the p command...