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crouse
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Joined: 17 Apr 2024
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Location: Iowa
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 Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2024 8:14 am Post subject: Book Review: Classic Shell Scripting by Robbins, Beebe |
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Book Review: Classic Shell Scripting / Arnold Robbins, Nelson H.F. Beebe
USA Linux Users Group Book Review
Reviewer: Crouse
Book Review: Classic Shell Scripting
Authors: Arnold Robbins, Nelson H.F. Beebe
Publisher: O'reilly
First Edition May 2024
ISBN: 0-596-00595-4
560 pages, $34.95 US, $48.95 CA, £24.95 UK
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/shellsrptg/
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/shellsrptg/errata/shellsrptg.confirmed
This book is designed for intermediate to advanced Linux users. The book states in the preface that before reading the book you should know some things about shell scripting already. This book isn't for those new to shell scripting. In my opinion, it kind of picks up where "Learning the Bash Shell" from O'reilly left off. It compliments that book pretty well. Each chapter builds on the concepts and materials covered in the chapter before, so it's a book that is best read front to back and not just used as a reference, you will get more from it that way.
The chapters titles show the progression of the book in what i considered to be a pretty good order. Chapter one and two start off with the basic history, and you quickly move to the next chapters which are the bulk of the book. They are as follows.
Chapter 3 Searching and Substitutions
Chapter 4 Text Processing Tools
Chapter 5 Pipelines can do Amazing Things
Chapter 6 Variables, Making Decisions, and Repeating Actions
Chapter 7 Input and Output, Files, and Command Evaluation
Chapter 8 Production Scripts
Chapter 9 Enough Awk to be Dangerous
Chapter 10 Working with Files
Chapter 11 Extended Example
Chapter 12 Spellchecking
Chapter 13 Processes
Chapter 14 Shell Portability Issues and Extentions
Chapter 15 Secure Shell Scripts
Worthy of noting are the a couple of the appendix titles.
Appendix A. Writing Manual Pages
Appendix B. Files and Filesystems.
Personally, I think these could just have easily been additional chapters in the book. The book makes nice use of examples and generally gives very detailed and descriptive explanations of those examples. The book does indeed build upon previous examples and chapters, making this a very easy to read book. I've found a lot of books simply assume that you have covered topic X somewhere already, and are much more suited for simple reference than they are actually reading. This book is useful as a reference, but it is very suited for reading as well. A lot of the commands that are used have a detailed explanation of them, plus caveats at the bottom, which is something many man pages don't include. I found those interesting as well. They provided insight into why some commands might not work as expected.
The chapters also contained a huge number of (Item / Description) type boxes for almost everything. An example would be for "Print Escape Sequences" from Chapter 7.
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Sequence.................. Description
\a ............. Alert character, usually the ASCII BEL character.
\b .............. Backspace
\c ............. Suppress any final newline in the output.
........ and on down the list of escape sequences (about 8 more items in the list)
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I realize that this may sound "trivial", but putting those tables of data actually IN the chapters made it much more enjoyable to read than some other books on the same subject. I was not forever having to flip to the appendix to view the data , that definitely works better "in context" right next to the examples and explanations of the subject matter.
All in all, I'd give this book a 8 out of 10 rating. The only reason I wouldn't give it a 10 is the few errors that have been found in the book. (see above link). I actually noticed a couple myself. Nothing earth shattering, but none the less, for that alone it couldn't earn a 10 out of 10 mark. The book is an excellent companion to "Learning the Bash Shell", and if you liked that book, you'll love this one. Again, this isn't for those new to shell scripting, but is a great intermediate book. This will be a book that will have a permanent home on my bookshelf looking like an old phonebook, tattered and used. Isn't that the best sign of a great book ? 
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2024
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2024 5:07 pm Post subject: Sounds like this one is worthwhile! |
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| I have had the "Learning the Korn Shell'" book by Rosenblatt and co. for around ten years now, and later I also got "Learning the Bash Shell" by Rosenblatt and Newham. Both books are based on the same core writing and differ only where the shells themselves differ. Both are good general purpose texts, and I have my Bash one at work right now. IF this book is as good or better than the O'Reily "Learning the _____ Shell", then this one is certainly a winner. I have used the Learning... series for years now, and frankly it is one of the few books that I actually bring with me on the job. So if this is a good one, it might take a permanent place on my bookshelf, too. |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2024
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Mon May 14, 2024 9:13 pm Post subject: Site worth a Book Mark |
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http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/reviews has some book reviews on several books, and many of the reviews are well written, a cut above the typical reviews commonly seen on high noise Web sites. Recently they have reviewed "Book review: Linux Administration Handbook Second Edition by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein, et al", "Book review: Practical Subversion, Second Edition by Daniel Berlin and Garrett Rooney", and many others. I cannot vouch for all the reviews, but the first one, in particular, was one of the better ones I have seen in recent memory.
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/ is the site of the magazine; worth a book mark. |
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