[SOLVED] Bash scripting resources - books, websites, tutorials, standards etc

GPGAgent · 11-28-2018, 01:03 PM

Hi All,

Can I get some recommendations to learn Bash scripting? Books, tutorials, tips & tricks, etc.

Also some idea on good practice, standards, and so on.

One tip I read was that ending scripts with .sh is bad form. Not sure why this would be.

TIA folks

scasey · 11-28-2018, 01:13 PM

Not bash so much, but I started with O'Reilly's "UNIX in a Nutshell" back in the day.
There is a lot of good information on the 'net. DuckDuckGo is your friend.

nodir · 11-28-2018, 01:37 PM

Quote:

On tip I read was that ending scripts with .sh is bad form. Not sure why this would be.

This is what the #bash IRC channel bot says about it:

Quote:

Don't use extensions for your scripts. Scripts define new commands that you can run, and commands are generally not given extensions. Do you run ls.elf? Also: bash scripts are *not* sh scripts (so don't use .sh) and the extension will only cause dependencies headaches if the script gets rewritten in another language. See
http://www.talisman.org/~erlkonig/do...idered-harmful

Idling in that channel, #bash, will teach you quite a bit (or at least it helped me, but i got rather basic needs).

If you (think you must) use the web, as proposed, then you will probably make sure to compare the results with this:
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls
lots of times you will run into one of these pitfalls when searching the web.
The "guide" and the "FAQ" at that site, mywiki.wooledge.org, are also pretty good.
Else there is: http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/ as a good guide.

And also you might want to make use of:
https://www.shellcheck.net/

pan64 · 11-28-2018, 02:09 PM

tldp was not yet mentioned:
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/
http://wiki.tldp.org/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

They are old, but not outdated. The newest "inventions" are missing, otherwise a really good resource.

GPGAgent · 11-28-2018, 05:07 PM

Thanks for the comments, and of course I forgot the main resource - linuxquestions.org!

l0f4r0 · 11-29-2018, 04:57 AM

2 more:

GPGAgent · 11-29-2018, 01:08 PM

Just found these https://google.github.io/styleguide/shell.xml

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hrl/devel..._Standards.pdf

http://teaching.idallen.com/cst8177/...ipt_style.html

http://www.inquisitor.ru/doc/coding-style-shell.html

astrogeek · 11-29-2018, 02:20 PM

While it is not in a How-To or Tips-n-Tricks format, do not neglect the bash man page!

It is complete, readable and always available (if not on your distro then change distros!).

I find many people shun the bash man page because of its length - it is long because it contains a wealth of information!

Spend some quality time learning your way around it, the effort will repay you many times over!

GPGAgent · 11-30-2018, 09:13 AM

Good point about man pages

And of course for internal commands there is help

help will list all built in commands

and then help cmdname will print help about cmdname

Code:

onk@XEON4 ~ $ help bg
bg: bg [job_spec ...]
    Move jobs to the background.
    
    Place the jobs identified by each JOB_SPEC in the background, as if they
    had been started with `&'.  If JOB_SPEC is not present, the shell's notion
    of the current job is used.
    
    Exit Status:
    Returns success unless job control is not enabled or an error occurs.
jonk@XEON4 ~ $

- cheers