topic Scripting book in Operating System - HP-UX

Scripting book

Tony500 — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:14:22 GMT

Hi All,
I have very little knowledge of scripting in Unix. Could you guys tell me, in your opinion, what would be the BEST book for someone like me to learn scripting from?
Thanks everyone!
Tony500

Re: Scripting book

Dario_1 — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:18:19 GMT

Tony

I use UNIX Shell Programming by Stephen G. Kochan and Patrick H. Wood. I think is very good.

Regards,

DR

Re: Scripting book

Steve Labar — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:22:25 GMT

I use the same as Dario and I also use the UNIX C Shell Field Guide often for csh scripts.

Steve

Re: Scripting book

Pete Randall — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:22:51 GMT

"Unix Shells by Example", Ellie Quigley, Prentice Hall
http://www.phptr.com

Pete

Re: Scripting book

S.K. Chan — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:25:12 GMT

If you are a beginner, I personally find this book very useful .. "The Korn Shell - Linux and Unix Shell Programming" by Anatole Olczak.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201675234/qid=1050510102/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/102-7602643-0235320?v=glance&s=books
You can browse some of the pages from the book.

Re: Scripting book

Zafar A. Mohammed_1 — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:59:11 GMT

All the above books are good. You can also check this
http://docs.hp.com/hpux/pdf/B2355-90046.pdf

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/pdf/B2355-90072.pdf

and if you can search on Google for "UNIX Unleashed", you can read free this book. Currently, I am at office and I don't have that complete free link. I'll post from home.

Thanks
Zafar

Re: Scripting book

John Meissner — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:47:42 GMT

I use 2 books

Korn Shell Programming by example
by Dennis OBrien & David Pitts

sed and awk
from Oreilly
by Dale dougherty and Arnold Robbins

I had never written scripts before I read these and I've learned very rapidly using them.

Re: Scripting book

Tony500 — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:59:01 GMT

Thanks Everyone! I'll check these out. oh and Zafar, that free link would be great, thanks!
Tony500

Re: Scripting book

John Meissner — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 18:07:46 GMT

I found the free link

http://pluto.phys.nwu.edu/~zhaoyj/learn/Unix-internet/toc.htm

Re: Scripting book

Bill Hassell — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 18:34:42 GMT

"The New KORN Shell" by Bolsky and Korn. (Note that one of the authors is David Korn) My dogeared copy is well used but it is not a tutorial, it is a reference text. Also useful is that it documents the various revisions of the Korn shell. It is also a good reference for HP's POSIX shell since POSIX shells are very similar (ksh, bash, etc).

But there is a big jump from the commands to the technique. While a good Korn shell book will show you a few examples on using certain commands and variables, technique is what makes for stable and reliable shell programs. I always start my shell programs with the courtesy loader directive (always a good idea for every interpreted language such as perl or ksh or csh, etc), followed by set -u (to avoid big errors later), then if the program will need tempfiles, I created a unique temp directory (not a tempfile). That way, I can store all my temp files in one spot and use the trap command to remove everything if the program is aborted or terminates normally. I will code variables as ALL CAPS so they stand out, functions are name with LeadingCaps, and I tenmd to code about 20-30% comments, mostly because I forget why I did something a certain way.

Other techniques are found simply by reading shell scripts and figuring out what is happening. Look at the Shelldorado website http://www.shelldorado.com/ which gives a lot of techniques for good scripting. Another resource for HP-UX scripts (that do useful things) is: ftp://contrib:9unsupp8@hprc.external.hp.com/sysadmin/coolscripts/

Re: Scripting book

Zafar A. Mohammed_1 — Thu, 17 Apr 2003 01:22:24 GMT

John already given the correct link for "Unix Unleashed". But I have some few others which might help if you can take a look of free books.

http://www.maththinking.com/boat/booksIndex.html

Thanks
Zafar

Re: Scripting book

Paddy_1 — Thu, 17 Apr 2003 13:14:12 GMT

While I agree "the New Korn Shell" is kind of a reference I started my shell programming with awk and I would recommend the following link with examples
http://www.novia.net/~phridge/programming/awk/