Author : Mark G. Sobell Screen Reader : Supported Works with : Source : Status : Available | Last checked: 3 Hour ago! Size : 21,383 KB |
For use with all versions of Linux, including Ubuntu,™ Fedora,™ openSUSE,™ Red Hat,® Debian, Mandriva, Mint, and now OS X, too!
The Most Useful Linux Tutorial and Reference, with Hundreds of High-Quality Examples for Every Distribution–Now Covers OS X and Perl, Too!
To be truly productive with Linux, you need to thoroughly master shells and the command line. Until now, you had to buy two books to gain that mastery: a tutorial on fundamental Linux concepts and techniques, plus a separate reference. Now, there’s a far better solution. Renowned Linux expert Mark Sobell has brought together comprehensive, insightful guidance on the tools system administrators, developers, and power users need most, and an outstanding day-to-day reference, both in the same book.
This book is 100 percent distribution and release agnostic: You can use it with any Linux system, now and for years to come. Use Macs, too? This new edition adds comprehensive coverage of the Mac OS X command line, including essential OS X-only tools and utilities other Linux/UNIX books ignore.
Packed with hundreds of high-quality, realistic examples, this book gives you Linux from the ground up: the clearest explanations and most useful knowledge about everything from filesystems to shells, editors to utilities, and programming tools to regular expressions. Sobell has also added an outstanding new primer on Perl, the most important programming tool for Linux admins seeking to automate complex, time-consuming tasks.
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, Second Edition, is the only book to deliver
Praise for the First Edition of A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming
“First Sobell taught people how to use Linux…now he teaches you the power of Linux. A must-have book for anyone who wants to take Linux to the next level.”
—Jon “maddog” Hall, Executive Director, Linux International
“This book is a very useful tool for anyone who wants to ‘look under the hood’ so to speak, and really start putting the power of Linux to work. What I find particularly frustrating about man pages is that they never include examples. Sobell, on the other hand, outlines very clearly what the command does and then gives several common, easy-tounderstand examples that make it a breeze to start shell programming on one’s own. As with Sobell’s other works, this is simple, straight-forward, and easy to read. It’s a great book and will stay on the shelf at easy arm’s reach for a long time.”
—Ray Bartlett, Travel Writer
“Overall I found this book to be quite excellent, and it has earned a spot on the very front of my bookshelf. It covers the real ‘guts’ of Linux—the command line and its utilities—and does so very well. Its strongest points are the outstanding use of examples, and the Command Reference section. Highly recommended for Linux users of all skill levels. Well done to Mark Sobell and Prentice Hall for this outstanding book!”
—Dan Clough, Electronics Engineer and Slackware Linux user
“Totally unlike most Linux books, this book avoids discussing everything via GUI and jumps right into making the power of the command line your friend.”
—Bjorn Tipling, Software Engineer, ask.com
“This book is the best distro-agnostic, foundational Linux reference I’ve ever seen, out of dozens of Linux-related books I’ve read. Finding this book was a real stroke of luck. If you want to really understand how to get things done at the command line, where the power and flexibility of free UNIX-like OSes really live, this book is among the best tools you’ll find toward that end.”
—Chad Perrin, Writer, TechRepublic
Praise for Other Books by Mark G. Sobell
“I keep searching for books that collect everything you want to know about a subject in one place, and keep getting disappointed. Usually the books leave out some important topic, while others go too deep in some areas and must skim lightly over the others. A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® is one of those rare books that actually pulls it off. Mark G. Sobell has created a single reference for Red Hat Linux that can’t be beat! This marvelous text (with a 4-CD set of Linux Fedora Core 2 included) is well worth the price. This is as close to an ‘everything you ever needed to know’ book that I’ve seen. It’s just that good and rates 5 out of 5.”
—Ray Lodato, Slashdot contributor
“Mark Sobell has written a book as approachable as it is authoritative.”
—Jeffrey Bianchine, Advocate, Author, Journalist
“Excellent reference book, well suited for the sysadmin of a Linux cluster, or the owner of a PC contemplating installing a recent stable Linux. Don’t be put off by the daunting heft of the book. Sobell has strived to be as inclusive as possible, in trying to anticipate your system administration needs.”
—Wes Boudville, Inventor
“A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® is a brilliant book. Thank you Mark Sobell.”
—C. Pozrikidis, University of California at San Diego
“This book presents the best overview of the Linux operating system that I have found. . . . [It] should be very helpful and understandable no matter what the reader’s background: traditional UNIX user, new Linux devotee, or even Windows user. Each topic is presented in a clear, complete fashion, and very few assumptions are made about what the reader knows. . . . The book is extremely useful as a reference, as it contains a 70-page glossary of terms and is very well indexed. It is organized in such a way that the reader can focus on simple tasks without having to wade through more advanced topics until they are ready.”
—Cam Marshall, Marshall Information Service LLC, Member of Front Range UNIX Users Group [FRUUG], Boulder, Colorado
“Conclusively, this is THE book to get if you are a new Linux user and you just got into the RH/Fedora world. There’s no other book that discusses so many different topics and in such depth.”
—Eugenia Loli-Queru, Editor in Chief, OSNews.com
Mark G. Sobell is president of Sobell Associates Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in UNIX/Linux training, support, and custom software development. He is the author of many best-selling UNIX and Linux books and has more than twenty-five years of experience working with UNIX and Linux.
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming explains how to work with the Linux operating system from the command line. The first few chapters quickly bring readers with little computer experience up to speed. The rest of the book is appropriate for more experienced computer users. This book does not describe a particular release or distribution of Linux but rather pertains to all recent versions of Linux.
Command line interface (CLI). In the beginning there was the command line (textual) interface (CLI), which enabled you to give Linux commands from the command line. There was no mouse or icons to drag and drop. Some programs, such as emacs, implemented rudimentary windows using the very minimal graphics available in the ASCII character set. Reverse video helped separate areas of the screen. Linux was born and raised in this environment.
Naturally all of the original Linux tools were invoked from the command line. The real power of Linux still lies in this environment, which explains why many Linux professionals work exclusively from the command line. Using clear descriptions and lots of examples, this book shows you how to get the most out of your Linux system using the command line interface.
Linux distributions. A Linux distribution comprises the Linux kernel, utilities, and application programs. Many distributions are available, including Debian, Red Hat, Fedora Core, SUSE, Mandriva (formerly Mandrake), KNOPPIX, and Slackware. Although the distributions differ from one another in various ways, all of them rely on the Linux kernel, utilities, and applications. This book is based on the code that is common to most distributions. As a consequence you can use it regardless of which distribution you are running.
Overlap. If you read A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux®: Fedora Core™ and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Second Edition, or a subsequent edition, you will notice some overlap between that book and the one you are reading now. The introduction, the appendix on regular expressions, and the chapters on the utilities (Chapter 3 of this book--not Part V), the filesystem, and programming tools are very similar in the two books. The three chapters that cover the Bourne Again Shell (bash) have been expanded and rewritten for this text. Chapters that appear in this book and but not in A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux,® Second Edition, include those covering the vim and emacs editors, the TC Shell (tcsh), the gawk and sed languages, and Part V, which describes 80 of the most useful Linux utility programs in detail.
Audience. This book is designed for a wide range of readers. It does not require programming experience, although some experience using a general-purpose computer is helpful. It is appropriate for the following readers:
Benefits. A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming gives you an in-depth understanding of how to use Linux from the command line. Regardless of your background, it offers the knowledge you need to get on with your work: You will come away from this book understanding how to use Linux, and this text will remain a valuable reference for years to come.
This book is organized for ease of use in different situations. For example, you can read it from cover to cover to learn command line Linux from the ground up. Alternatively, once you are comfortable using Linux, you can use this book as a reference: Look up a topic of interest in the table of contents or index and read about it. Or, refer to one of the utilities covered in Part V, “Linux Utility Programs.” You can also think of this book as a catalog of Linux topics: Flip through the pages until a topic catches your eye. The book also includes many pointers to Web sites where you can get additional information: Consider the Web an extension of this book.
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming offers the following features:
This section describes the information that each chapter covers and explains how that information can help you take advantage of the power of Linux. You may want to review the table of contents for more detail.
Presents background information on Linux. This chapter covers the history of Linux, explains how the GNU project helped Linux get started, and discusses some of Linux’s important features that distinguish it from other operating systems.
Part I introduces Linux and gets you started using it.
TIP: Experienced Users May Want to Skim Part IExplains the typographic conventions that this book uses to make explanations clearer and easier to read. This chapter provides basic information and explains how to log in, change your password, give Linux commands using the shell, and find system documentation.
Explains the command line interface (CLI) and briefly introduces more than 30 command line utilities. Working through this chapter gives you a feel for Linux and introduces some of the tools you will use day in and day out. The utilities covered in this chapter include
Discusses the Linux hierarchical filesystem, covering files, filenames, pathnames, working with directories, access permissions, and hard and symbolic links. Understanding the filesystem allows you to organize your data so that you can find information quickly. It also enables you to share some of your files with other users while keeping other files private.
Explains how to use shell features to make your work faster and easier. All of the features covered in this chapter work with both the bash and tcsh. This chapter discusses
Part II covers two classic, powerful Linux command line text editors. Most Linux distributions include the vim text editor, an “improved” version of the widely used vi editor, as well as the popular GNU emacs editor. Text editors enable you to create and modify text files that can hold programs, shell scripts, memos, and input to text formatting programs. Because Linux system administration involves editing text-based configuration files, skilled Linux administrators are adept at using text editors.
Starts with a tutorial on vim and then explains how to use many of the advanced features of vim, including special characters in search strings, the General-Purpose and Named buffers, parameters, markers, and execution of commands from vim. The chapter concludes with a summary of vim commands.
Opens with a tutorial and then explains many of the features of the emacs editor as well as how to use the META, ALT, and ESCAPE keys. The chapter also covers key bindings, buffers, and incremental and complete searching for both character strings and regular expressions. In addition, it details the relationship between Point, the cursor, Mark, and Region. It also explains how to take advantage of the extensive online help facilities available from emacs. Other topics covered include cutting and pasting, using multiple windows and frames, and working with emacs modes--specifically C mode, which aids programmers in writing and debugging C code. Chapter 7 concludes with a summary of emacs commands.
Part III goes into more detail about bash and introduces the TC Shell (tcsh).
Picks up where Chapter 5 leaves off, covering more advanced aspects of working with a shell. For examples it uses the Bourne Again Shell--bash, the shell used almost exclusively for system shell scripts. Chapter 8 describes how to
Describes tcsh and covers features that are common to and different between bash and tcsh. This chapter explains how to
Part IV covers programming under Linux. It discusses the C programming environment, the use of bash as a programming language, and ways to write programs using gawk and sed.
Introduces Linux’s exceptional programming environment. This chapter
Once you have mastered the basics of Linux, you can use your knowledge to build more complex and specialized programs, using the shell as a programming language.
Shows how to use bash to write advanced shell scripts. This chapter discusses
Chapter 11 poses two complete shell programming problems and then shows you how to solve them step by step. The first problem uses recursion to create a hierarchy of directories. The second problem develops a quiz program and shows you how to set up a shell script that interacts with a user and how the script processes data. (The examples in Part V also demonstrate many features of the utilities you can use in shell scripts.)
Explains how to write programs using the powerful gawk language that filter data, write reports, and retrieve data from the Internet. The advanced programming section describes how to set up two-way communication with another program using a coprocess and how to obtain input over a network instead of from a local file.
Describes sed, the noninteractive stream editor that finds many applications as a filter within shell scripts. This chapter discusses how to use sed’s buffers to write simple yet powerful programs and includes many examples.
Linux includes hundreds of utilities. Chapters 11 and 12 as well as Part V provide extensive examples of the use of more than 80 of the most important utilities with which you can solve problems without resorting to programming in C. If you are already familiar with UNIX/Linux, this part of the book will be a valuable, easy-to-use reference. If you are not an experienced user, it will serve as a useful supplement while you are mastering the earlier sections of the book.
Although the descriptions of the utilities in Chapters 11 and 12 and Part V are presented in a format similar to that used by the Linux manual (man) pages, they are much easier to read and understand. These utilities were chosen because you will work with them day in and day out (for example, ls and cp), because they are powerful tools that are especially useful in shell scripts (sort, paste, and test), because they help you work with your Linux system (ps, kill, and fsck), or because they enable you to communicate with other systems (ssh, scp, and ftp). Each utility description includes complete explanations of its most useful options. The “Discussion” and “Notes” sections present tips and tricks for using the utility to full advantage. The “Examples” sections demonstrate how to use these utilities in real life, alone and together with other utilities to generate reports, summarize data, and extract information. Take a look at the “Examples” sections for gawk, ftp, and sort to see how extensive these sections are.
Part VI includes the appendixes, the glossary, and the index.
Explains how to use regular expressions to take advantage of the hidden power of Linux. Many utilities, including grep, sed, vim, and gawk, accept regular expressions in place of simple strings of characters. A single regular expression can match many simple strings.
Details the steps typically used to solve the problems you may encounter with a Linux system. This appendix also includes many links to Web sites that offer documentation, useful Linux information, mailing lists, and software.
Describes how to use tools to download software and keep your system current. This appendix includes information on
Defines more than 500 terms that pertain to the use of Linux.
Helps you find the information you want quickly.
The author’s home page (www.sobell.com) will contain downloadable listings of the longer programs from this book as well as pointers to many interesting and useful Linux-related sites on the World Wide Web, a list of corrections to the book, answers to even-numbered exercises, and a solicitation for corrections, comments, and suggestions.