Preface

This book aims to teach Linux command line tools and Shell Scripting for beginner to intermediate level users. The main focus is towards managing your files and performing text processing tasks. Topics like system administration and networking won't be discussed.

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with basic computer usage, know fundamental terms like files and directories, how to install programs and so on. You should also be already comfortable with programming basics like variables, loops and functions.

In terms of software, you should have access to the GNU bash shell and commonly used Linux command line tools. This could be as part of a Linux distribution or via other means such as a Virtual Machine, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) and so on. More details about the expected working environment will be discussed in the introductory chapters.

You are also expected to get comfortable with reading manuals, searching online, visiting external links provided for further reading, tinkering with the illustrated examples, asking for help when you are stuck and so on. In other words, be proactive and curious instead of just consuming the content passively.

See my curated list on Linux CLI and Shell Scripting for more learning resources.

Conventions

• Code snippets shown are copy pasted from the bash shell (version 5.0.17) and modified for presentation purposes. Some commands are preceded by comments to provide context and explanations, blank lines have been added to improve readability and so on.
• External links are provided throughout the book for you to explore certain topics in more depth.
• The cli-computing repo has all the example files and scripts used in the book. The repo also includes all the exercises as a single file, along with a separate solutions file. If you are not familiar with the git command, click the Code button on the webpage to get the files.
• See the Setup section for instructions to create a working environment for following along the contents presented in this book.

Acknowledgements

• GNU Manuals — documentation for command line tools and the bash shell
• stackoverflow and unix.stackexchange — for getting answers on pertinent questions related to CLI tools
• tex.stackexchange — for help on pandoc and tex related questions
• /r/commandline/, /r/linux4noobs/, /r/linuxquestions/ and /r/linux/ — helpful forums
• canva — cover image
• Warning and Info icons by Amada44 under public domain
• carbon — for creating terminal screenshots with highlighted text
• oxipng, pngquant and svgcleaner — optimizing images
• Inkscape — favicon
• mdBook — for web version of the book that you are currently reading
  • mdBook-pagetoc — for adding table of contents for each page
  • minify-html — for minifying html files

Feedback and Errata

I would highly appreciate it if you'd let me know how you felt about this book. It could be anything from a simple thank you, pointing out a typo, mistakes in code snippets, which aspects of the book worked for you (or didn't!) and so on. Reader feedback is essential and especially so for self-published authors.

You can reach me via:

• Issue Manager: https://github.com/learnbyexample/cli-computing/issues
• E-mail: [email protected]
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/learn_byexample

Author info

Sundeep Agarwal is a lazy being who prefers to work just enough to support his modest lifestyle. He accumulated vast wealth working as a Design Engineer at Analog Devices and retired from the corporate world at the ripe age of twenty-eight. Unfortunately, he squandered his savings within a few years and had to scramble trying to earn a living. Against all odds, selling programming ebooks saved his lazy self from having to look for a job again. He can now afford all the fantasy ebooks he wants to read and spends unhealthy amount of time browsing the internet.

When the creative muse strikes, he can be found working on yet another programming ebook (which invariably ends up having at least one example with regular expressions). Researching materials for his ebooks and everyday social media usage drowned his bookmarks, so he maintains curated resource lists for sanity sake. He is thankful for free learning resources and open source tools. His own contributions can be found at https://github.com/learnbyexample.

List of books: https://learnbyexample.github.io/books/

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Code snippets are available under MIT License.

Resources mentioned in the Acknowledgements section above are available under original licenses.

Book version

1.1

See Version_changes.md to track changes across book versions.