13.1. Objective 1: Customize and Use the Shell Environment

This Objective could be considered a brief “getting started with shells” overview because it details many of the basic concepts necessary to utilize the shell environment on Linux. These concepts are fundamental and very important for system administrators working on Linux systems. If you’re new to shells and shell scripting, take heart. You can think of it as a combination of computer interaction (conversation) and computer programming (automation). It is nothing more than that, but the result is far more than this simplicity implies. If you’re an old hand with shell programming, you may want to skip ahead to brush up on some of the particulars necessary for Exam 102.

If you’ve never taken a computer programming course before, don’t be too discouraged. Shell programming is mostly automating repetitive tasks. Your shell scripts can conceivably become relatively complicated programs in their own right, but shell scripting does not have the learning curve of a “conventional” programming language such as C or C++.