Chris Johnson & Jayant Varma 
Shell Scripting Recipes 
A Problem-Solution Approach

Filled with over 150 essential, practical recipes that empower Unix users to regain lost time


spent creating and testing shell scripts. The majority of scripts included are POSIX-compliant


and supported by many of the major shell variants, including Bash, ksh, and sh.


Each real-world example recipe follows the same problem-solution structure, meaning


cross-referencing is easy and fast. Recipe topics include file conversion (DOS, UNIX, and


Mac), system administration, resource monitoring, filename management, complex date


calculations, screen control capabilities, and much more.






Completely updated for this second edition and taking all the changes of the past ten


years into account, every recipe in this book is now relevant for a modern audience. Authors


Chris Johnson’s and Jayant Varma’s code is clear, direct, and applicable. Add this excellent


reference to your library today.

Table of Content

1: The POSIX Shell and Command-Line Utilities

2: Playing with Files: Viewing, Manipulating, and Editing Text Files

3: String Briefs

4: What’s in a Word?

5: Scripting by Numbers

6: Loose Names Sink Scripts: Bringing Sanity to Filenames

7: Treading a Righteous PATH

8: The Dating Game

9: Good Housekeeping: Monitoring and Tidying Up File Systems

10: Screenplay: The screen-funcs Library

11: Aging, Archiving, and Deleting Files

12: Covering All Your Databases

13: Home on the Web

14:Taking Care of Business

15: Random Acts of Scripting

16: A Smorgasbord of Scripts

17: Script Development Management

Appendix A: Internet Scripting Resources

About the author

Chris F.A. Johnson was introduced to Unix in 1990 and learned shell scripting because there was no C compiler on the system. His first major project was a menu-driven, user-extensible database system with report generator. Chris uses the shell as his primary, general-purpose programming language, and his projects have included a member database, menuing system, and POP3 mail filtering and retrieval. Chris is the author of Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Apress, 2005). When not pushing shell scripting to the limit, he designs and codes web sites, teaches chess, and composes cryptic crosswords.