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

Carl Albing is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the U.S. Naval Academy where he is teaching courses on programming languages and on High Performance Computing. Prior to this he was writing software for some of the biggest and fastest computers in the world as a software engineer for Cray, Inc. As an independent consultant, he is comfortable programming with C, Java, bash and much more. Carl is the coauthor of two books, one on Java development on Linux and his latest, the O'Reilly "bash Cookbook". A former software consultant, manager, analyst and programmer with an amazing breadth of software experience, Carl has worked with companies in the US, Canada and Europe. He has worked for large companies and small startups, in technical as well as in managerial and marketing roles. Carl's software projects, past and present, involve the design and development of distributed computing software, medical image processing applications, compilers, medical devices, web-based factory floor automation, and more. Carl's education includes a Ph.D. in Computer Science as well as a B.A. degree in Mathematics and an International MBA. He has spoken at conferences and training seminars in the US, Canada and Europe as well as local high schools and colleges. Carl enjoys speaking at user groups and seminars on Linux, C, Java, and bash topics.

JP Vossen has been working with computers since the early 80s and has been in the IT industry since the early 90s, specializing in Information Security since the late 90s. He's been fascinated with scripting and automation since he first understood what an autoexec.bat was, and was delighted to discover the power and flexibility of bash and GNU on Linux in the mid-90s. He has previously written for Information Security Magazine and SearchSecurity.com, among others. On those few occasion when he's not in front of a computer, he is usually taking something apart, putting something together, or both.