Malcolm Kayser Computer Training Limited

Courses in Programming (including Cobol), UNIX, Linux, IBM Mainframe,
Design Methods and Web design

www.malkayser.plus.com

Telephone: +44 (0)20 8954 1981
E-mail: malcolm@malkayser.plus.com

LINUX BASH SHELL PROGRAMMING

This course is designed for delegates with some Linux experience who wish to become familiar with bash Shell Scripts.

Overall Objective

The course will enable the delegate to write both basic and complicated scripts to automate tasks using the facilities of the shell, and will especially benefit system administrators who need to run everyday administration tasks.

Audience

System Administrators, System support personnel, Installation personnel, Network administrators, Programmers and other users, who have a broad-based understanding of Linux and who may need to write or maintain shell scripts.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the Linux (or UNIX) environment and commands is useful. Knowledge of the vim editor is assumed. For those delegates new to Linux, attendance of the three-day Introduction to Linux course is recommended.

Duration

2 - 3 days, hands-on (up to 5 days if sed and awk included).

Course Objectives

On completion of this course, the delegate will be able to:

Understand the structure of the shell environment and the commands to manipulate it
Use the main features of the scripting language
Carry out arithmetic within a shell script
Use commands to effect decision making and flow-control
Understand how to use functions
Write interactive scripts to improve productivity
In addition to the above, learn to use the Linux utilities: sed and awk (also can be run as a separate course: UNIX/Linux Tools and Utilities)

Course Contents

Introduction to bash (the "Bourne-Again Shell")
Review of the basics
The command structure
Here documents
Job Control
The bash Environment
Environment Variables
Using Command History
bash Variables
Creating and executing bash scripts
Debugging bash scripts
Processing command-line parameters
Comments in scripts
The read statement
Conditional statements (if, case and select)
The test, [ ... ] and [[ ... ]] commands
The let and (( ... )) command
The exit, break and continue statements
Operators
Testing strings and numbers
The declare command
Creating loops (for, while and until)
Handling arrays
The getopts command
Functions
Using the trap command
sed and awk (optional)

page updated: 26/10/2012

Download course outline as a pdf