For system administrators, programmers, and end users, shell command or carefully crafted shell script can save you time and effort, or facilitate consistency and repeatability for a variety of common tasks. This cookbook provides more than 300 practical recipes for using bash, the popular Unix shell that enables you to harness and customize the power of any Unix or Linux system.

Ideal for new and experienced users alike—including proficient Windows users and sysadmins—this updated second edition helps you solve a wide range of problems. You’ll learn ways to handle input/output, file manipulation, program execution, administrative tasks, and many other challenges. Each recipe includes one or more scripting examples and a discussion of why the solution works.

You’ll find recipes for problems including:

Standard output and input, and executing commands
Shell variables, shell logic, and arithmetic
Intermediate shell tools and advanced scripting
Searching for files with find, locate, and slocate
Working with dates and times
Creating shell scripts for various end-user tasks
Working with tasks that require parsing
Writing secure shell scripts
Configuring and customizing bash