Product: 0596009658

The title sort of implies that this is a beginner’s book, but the contents stray away from beginner territory very quickly. You’re assumed to have a pretty good understanding of what a shell is and what it’s for; if you’re on Mac or Linux, for instance, you won’t find any explanations in here on how to find your terminal and start up a Bash shell; the authors assume you know what Bash is and how to find it on your computer. This book is instead a guided tour of absolutely every single feature of the Bash shell, along with tons of examples. If you’re new to Unix and the Unix family of operating systems, you might want a more high-level overview to start with. On the other hand, if you’re somebody who’s been using Unix since before the days of Linux or OS/X, you might be amazed how much Bash can do that you didn’t know about or didn’t know all the details of. That’s really where this book shines. My first introduction to the Unix shell was the Bourne shell on Solaris back in 1992; even though I’ve been writing shell scripts now for almost 25 years, there was a lot for me to learn from this text.
The publication date says 2005, but it’s pretty clear that most of the content was written a long time before that, and brought up to date to match the latest version of the Bash shell. There are quite a few references to things like hardwired DEC terminals that were rare to nonexistent even 15 years ago. Still, almost all of the examples in the book worked perfectly on my modern MacBook Pro, so there’s no reason to be concerned about the technical content - it’s still accurate, useful, and comprehensive. Highly recommended reading for every Bash user, as long as this isn’t your first introduction to Unix shells.
Rating: 5
0596009658
Count: 9