Book Image

The Software Developer's Guide to Linux

By : David Cohen, Christian Sturm
5 (2)
Book Image

The Software Developer's Guide to Linux

5 (2)
By: David Cohen, Christian Sturm

Overview of this book

Developers are always looking to raise their game to the next level, yet most are completely lost when it comes to the Linux command line. This book is the bridge that will take you to the next level in your software development career. Most of the skills in the book can be immediately put to work to make you a more efficient developer. It’s written specifically for software engineers, not Linux system administrators, so each chapter will equip you with just enough theory to understand what you’re doing before diving into practical commands that you can use in your day-to-day work as a software developer. As you work through the book, you’ll quickly absorb the basics of how Linux works while you get comfortable moving around the command line. Once you’ve got the core skills, you’ll see how to apply them in different contexts that you’ll come across as a software developer: building and working with Docker images, automating boring build tasks with shell scripts, and troubleshooting issues in production environments. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to use Linux and the command line comfortably and apply your newfound skills in your day-to-day work to save time, troubleshoot issues, and be the command-line wizard that your team turns to.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
18
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19
Index

Using Shell History

To become skilled at the command line, you have to use it regularly. There are no shortcuts to becoming comfortable, but there are a few high-value tricks that you can learn early on, which will save you time and frustration. The earlier you build them into your muscle memory, the better.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to leverage your shell history to avoid the tedious re-typing of commands you’ve already run. You’ll also see how to customize your shell’s behavior or appearance via the shell configuration file. Finally, we’ll show you the most useful shortcuts to edit and modify commands at the command prompt. All in all, this chapter will make you blazing fast on the command line.

We will go about this by covering the following topics:

  • Shell history
  • Executing previous commands with !
  • Jumping to the beginning or end of a line

Let’s begin by understanding shell history.