Book Image

Learn Linux Shell Scripting – Fundamentals of Bash 4.4

By : Sebastiaan Tammer
Book Image

Learn Linux Shell Scripting – Fundamentals of Bash 4.4

By: Sebastiaan Tammer

Overview of this book

Shell scripts allow us to program commands in chains and have the system execute them as a scripted event, just like batch files. This book will start with an overview of Linux and Bash shell scripting, and then quickly deep dive into helping you set up your local environment, before introducing you to tools that are used to write shell scripts. The next set of chapters will focus on helping you understand Linux under the hood and what Bash provides the user. Soon, you will have embarked on your journey along the command line. You will now begin writing actual scripts instead of commands, and will be introduced to practical applications for scripts. The final set of chapters will deep dive into the more advanced topics in shell scripting. These advanced topics will take you from simple scripts to reusable, valuable programs that exist in the real world. The final chapter will leave you with some handy tips and tricks and, as regards the most frequently used commands, a cheat sheet containing the most interesting flags and options will also be provided. After completing this book, you should feel confident about starting your own shell scripting projects, no matter how simple or complex the task previously seemed. We aim to teach you how to script and what to consider, to complement the clear-cut patterns that you can use in your daily scripting challenges.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Title Page
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction
Index

Summary


In this chapter, we presented an overview of the Linux filesystem. We started with a short introduction on filesystems in general, before explaining what is unique about the Linux filesystem. Ext4, XFS, and Btrfs filesystem implementations were discussed, together with the journaling feature of these filesystems. Next, the FHS that Linux adheres to was explained in high level, before focusing on the more important parts of the Linux filesystem in detail. This was done by exploring parts of the tree structure that makes up the Linux filesystem. We explained that different filesystems can be used side by side, by mounting them somewhere inside the tree. We ended the chapter by explaining that (almost) everything on Linux is handled as a file, and we discussed the different file types that are used.

The following commands were introduced in this chapter: pwd, cd, df, echo, type, cat, and less. As a tip, the Bash autocomplete feature was explained.