Wicked Cool Shell Scripts

This is a great book on Unix shell scripting. The book is loaded with useful scripts and I was even able to use some of the ideas presented in this book to make my own scripts perform much more efficiently. At one point I got stuck with one of the scripts so I emailed the author and he got back to me with a fix within a couple of days. Turned out to be a quirk with the Solaris 8 version of the operating system. I would recommend this book to anyone who works with Unix systems.

My work involves lot of shell scripting, But still this book showed me many handful tips and tricks to do stuff. If you are already familiar with shell scripting, this book will boost up skills and and its a good hands on practice.

This book is cool. And yes, this not a textbook where you learn in a sequential order. You need to have intermediate-advanced level understanding of bash. I read this book as a novel style, and randomly I skim through a script now and then. I really like the cookbook style.

Almost all the previous comments are so positive ... I almost hate to be a sour-puss.The book could absolutely be very good for a person who is somewhat new to shell scripting. For someone who is fairly experienced with *nix scripting the scripts aren't anywhere near at the "wicked cool" level.For me that level of praise would go to a book that started with code to manipulate the scripts in the rc related directories (determines the run level of a *nix system) and progressed substantially higher from there. The shell scripts that do web log analysis come the closest to the sort of stuff that would interest me.I feel absolutely certain that Dave Taylor is 100% capable of producing a much more advanced shell book. This just isn't it.Another commenter mentions that Mr. Taylor rejects csh as a scripting language. On that one I agree with Mr. Taylor. csh/tcsh can be nice as an interactive environment, but stick with sh/bash/ksh for writing scripts. ksh can also be a nice/powerful interactive shell once you climb the learning curve.Verdict-------Quite good for someone who is starting out and also someone who has some experience and wants more.Rather pedestrian for someone who is pretty experienced.The scripts-----------You can preview ALL of the shell scripts in the book by surfing to Mr. Taylor's domain and page for this book. Since Amazon "frowns" on addresses in the reviews the following could be a bit cryptic. His domain ends in com. The second level domain is on the next line. The third level domain is the traditional [...] The address is completed by "/wicked/" (no quotes).intuitiveMany of the scripts are available right on that page. A file with ALL of the scripts can be gotten. The file type is "TGZ." Both Linux/Unix commands and WinRAR can open that file. I suspect (but am not sure) that the freeware program 7Zip can also do it.

I have just begun to read this book. Shell scripts are command line tools that make Linux (and Unix) significantly more powerful and useful than Windows anything. But if you are intimidated by looking at a blank command line, then this is not the book for you.

If you are looking for a reference book don't buy this. If you want a book with a huge amount of well written examples and scripts stop right here. This book is fun to read and keeps making you think, I can use that in my own scripts or I did not know you could do that.Great

After being through a big pile of programming books (including bash books) which are overwhelmingly abstract and give few concrete examples, this book gives concrete examples of what works, then backs them up by explaining why certain choices were made while writing code. Most of the other books I've been through seem to be written so no other experts can disprove anything in them, but this book is targeted toward people who don't already know everything in the world. It has a dedicated space on my 'programming' bookshelf.

This book is awesome! I'm just learning Linux from college and my teacher recommended it as we start learning shell scripting.It's cool to get tips from people who have done something for a long time--especially when dealing with something like computers!

Very good book for beginners. I certainly would recommend it.Very easy to follow and everything is explained so that everyone can understand it.

Well detailed and well explained. I am doing a lot of progress with this book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone wishing to improve their BASH Shell scripting. it gives you examples, detailed example, with which bit does what... and that's the best way to learn, once you have the basic knowledge.

On aurait aimé que ce livre vous apprenne des syntaxes nouvelles, mais ce n'est qu'une énumération un peu laborieuse de scripts assez peu originaux. On reste sur sa faim.

Such a good read and some sneaky reference to how hackers may clean up after them selves absolute golden book .....MUST BUY!