You need to package up a bunch of files, send them somewhere, and do something with them at the destination. It isn’t an uncommon scenario. The obvious answer is to create an archive — a zip or tar ...

Few aspects of Unix system administration are more intimate than the relationship between the admin and their chosen shell. After all, the shell is the most fundamental interface to the system, the ...

Linux, known for its robustness and flexibility, has been a favorite among developers, system administrators, and technology enthusiasts. One of the pillars of Linux's capabilities is its inherent ...

Bash scripts are powerful, but with power comes great responsibility. It’s very easy for sloppy or poorly-planned code to do real damage, so it’s a good idea to be careful and practice defensive ...

Once a script is prepared and tested, you can get a significant task completed simply by typing the script's name followed by any required arguments. Developing scripts to handle your more complicated ...

Ever wondered why programming in Bash is so difficult? Bash employs the same constructs as traditional programming languages; however, under the hood, the logic is rather different. The Bourne-Again ...

Shell scripting is one of those skills that are absolutely invaluable on especially UNIX and BSD-based systems like the BSDs, the two zillion Linux distributions as well as MacOS. Yet not every shell ...

This article is reprinted from the book A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming 3rd edition, with permission of the author and publisher ...