I had one of those questions today about whether an option exists for a particular built-in command, 'type', and was about to painstakingly page through the bash man page as usual, when I remembered I had just gotten this book. Looked up 'type' in the index, and it referred me to two different pages: one that told me how I can avoid paging through the man page (use the 'help' command!), and one telling me everything I needed to know about using the command (and others like it) in my desired context. I was so happy I kissed it. Yes, I kissed the book.

From a quick thumb-through, I gathered that the rest of the book was just as concise and easy to navigate. Probably not great for complete linux n00bs, but it sure beats the bash man page!!! For anyone who uses the bash shell on a regular basis, whether for scripting or just running unix commands, this is absolutely indispensable. I have no idea how I got through 13+ years of unix programming without it.

Bash Cookbook is a great book for anyone who is interested in learning more about bash and shell scripting. The book starts off with its first chapters dedicated to beginners and learning what bash is, how the prompt works, and how exactly shell scripting works. As the book progresses further, the examples and topics get to an intermediate level, and finally end with an advanced level. The book is packed with wonderful examples and full explanations of all parts of bash.

I had very little knowledge of bash and any sort of scripting before reading this book. I started at the beginning even though I knew some of the topics that were covered, but I still learned things from the tips, which are scattered throughout the book. This book is a good fit for anyone that has very little experience. It explains every type of variable, how to make them, their uses, and shows examples of them in use. It does the same for loops, logic and arithmetic, and every other topic covered in the book. At the very end of the book there are nearly one hundred pages of appendixes which are a wonderful resource full of tables and sample code.

I feel very comfortable after reading this book to do more advanced tasks with bash and shell scripting. I strongly suggest this book to anyone who is interested in leaping into a UNIX shell for the first time. The book is very up to date as it was published in May of 2007, and I plan to use it as a reference for every bash questions I could have.

Great examples and excellent explanations on why users should do (or not do) things in certain ways when using BASH. However, the book takes off running with no context for Linux beginners. So if you're a n00b like me, start with another book first, and then come back and buy this one. It's well worth having.

I like this book. I will recommend it to someone who has some bash experience since it's not organized as a reference or study guide.

More than ten years after the first edition of Learning the bash Shell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)) came out, there appeared a book that sums up all the experience and expertise the authors have gained since those times using this shell. If you're new to Unix/Linux, start with the work linked in above, but if you have been using either of these systems for some time and you would like to learn how to make your life easier, then this is the book for you.

Why? Because it concentrates on teaching you how to solve your problems. After a brief introduction and setting the basics the real depth begins: 1. a problem, 2. developing a solution, 3. evaluating the solution. And lots of examples. Naturally, the first step is to recognise that you have a problem, which the book also teaches you: some people tend to suffer while doing a repetitive and uninteresting chore but does not even occur to them that it does not need to be so: they can turn the chore into a hunt for automatisation putting their brain to some creative use, so instead of numbing their mind they start sharping it, and this is exactly where this book comes in.

Presently, amazon.com does not offer you a look into the book, but you can have a preview of every chapter and also a full view of the table of contents at the publisher's page: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596526788/toc.html. Than come back here, as Amazon's price is much better. (At the time of writing this, there is a 37% discount.)