The newline Guide to Bash Scripting

Bash is the most popular shell and here we'll teach you popular tools, techniques, pitfalls and workarounds. Bash is simple to get started with, hard to master, and you can do incredible things with a line or two – inside we'll teach you how.

4.2 / 5 (11 ratings)
Published 4 years ago
Updated 7 days ago

Course Instructor

Victor Engmark

How The Course Works

01Remote

You can take the course from anywhere in the world, as long as you have a computer and an internet connection.

02Self-Paced

Learn at your own pace, whenever it's convenient for you. With no rigid schedule to worry about, you can take the course on your own terms.

03Community

Join a vibrant community of other students who are also learning with The newline Guide to Bash Scripting. Ask questions, get feedback and collaborate with others to take your skills to the next level.

04Structured

Learn in a cohesive fashion that's easy to follow. With a clear progression from basic principles to advanced techniques, you'll grow stronger and more skilled with each module.

Course Overview

What You Will Learn

How to find help on arbitrary commands
How to create robust, maintainable scripts
The importance of error handling settings
How to use many popular tools
What Bash is good and bad at

Bash is everywhere. It has grown to be the most popular shell on *nixes – including Mac OS X and Windows Subsystem Linux (WSL).

The newline Guide to Bash Scripting is an exploration of the Bash shell, scripting language and related tools. It’s aimed at developers who want to get the job done right the first time, and make sure maintenance is a breeze. Topics include:

how to find help on arbitrary commands
how to structure a robust and maintainable script
editing commands and interacting with the terminal efficiently
tools for dealing with version control, JSON, XML, text encodings, images and compressed files
quality assurance
… and much more

The goal of this book is to give you the tools and techniques to write Bash scripts which will stand the test of time, and to give you the means to explore the vast shell scripting ecosystem to find the tools you need right now.

Audience

Bash is the Linux glue language, so this book is aimed at software developers mainly working in some other language. We assume that you have working knowledge of programming concepts like variable assignments, loops and files, and at least a passing familiarity with interactive shells.

If you're comfortable with web development, but not–so–comfortable on the commandline then this course is perfect for you.

Our students work at

Module 1

Introduction

7 Lessons

01About this book
Sneak Peek
02Community and Code Downloads
Sneak Peek
03Organization of this book
Sneak Peek
04Conventions used in this book
Sneak Peek
05Development environment
Sneak Peek
06Acknowledgements
Free
07About the author
Free

Module 2

Self–Help

7 Lessons

01Find Bash Keyword, Function, and Builtin Command Documentation
Sneak Peek
02How to Use man bash and help to Learn About Bash Commands
Sneak Peek
03How to Find Information About Bash File Commands With --help
Sneak Peek
04The Best References for Bash Commands
Sneak Peek
05How to Find Package Specific Bash Documentation
Sneak Peek
06How to Read a Synopsis and Understand Bash Documentation
Sneak Peek
07How to Use apropos to Find Bash Commands (with examples)
Sneak Peek

Module 3

Running Scripts

3 Lessons

01How to Run a Bash Script Explicitly as an Argument in Terminal
Sneak Peek
02How to Run a Bash Script With a Shebang Line and the Script Path
Sneak Peek
03The Simplest Way to Run a Bash Script with $PATH
Sneak Peek

Module 4

Editing Commands and Scripts

2 Lessons

01How to Use Bash Readline to Edit Commands and Scripts
Sneak Peek
02How to Edit Bash Scripts in Nano and Vim
Sneak Peek

Module 5

Copying and Pasting

6 Lessons

01Copying and Pasting
Sneak Peek
02How to Select Text in Linux Terminal With a Mouse
Sneak Peek
03How to Copy and Paste in Linux Terminal With Keyboard Shortcuts
Sneak Peek
04How to Copy and Paste Text With the xclip Bash Command
Sneak Peek
05How to Copy Formatted Text as HTML From Linux Terminal
Sneak Peek
06How to Paste Text in Linux Terminal Safely
Sneak Peek

Module 6

Listing Files

3 Lessons

01Listing Files
Sneak Peek
02Using Linux ls Command to List Files and grep to Search for Files
Sneak Peek
03How to Glob, Find Pattern Matching Files, and Run Commands
Sneak Peek

Module 7

Text

3 Lessons

01Text
Sneak Peek
02How to Convert Windows Newlines For Bash With dos2unix
Sneak Peek
03How to Convert Text to UTF-8 And Other Encodings in Bash Scripts
Sneak Peek

Module 8

Math

7 Lessons

01Math
Sneak Peek
02How to Perform Arithmetic Expansion in Bash
Sneak Peek
03How to Evaluate and Calculate Arithmetic Expressions in Bash
Sneak Peek
04Best Practices for Using Variables in Bash Arithmetic
Sneak Peek
05How to Write Conditional Expressions in Bash
Sneak Peek
06Convert Bases in Bash to Work With Octals and Hexadecimals
Sneak Peek
07How to Perform Floating Point Math With Bash bc
Sneak Peek

Module 9

Time

4 Lessons

01Time
Sneak Peek
02Format Datetimes, Timestamps, and Time Zones in Bash
Sneak Peek
03How to Time How Long a Bash Command Takes to Run
Sneak Peek
04How to Kill Bash Commands With timeout
Sneak Peek

Module 10

Output

4 Lessons

01Output
Sneak Peek
02How to Use the Bash Echo Command to Print Text in Terminal
Sneak Peek
03printf vs echo - Printing Formatted Text With Newlines in Bash
Sneak Peek
04Using the logger Command to Log Bash Output
Sneak Peek

Module 11

JSON

3 Lessons

01JSON
Sneak Peek
02How to Use jq Command to Filter JSON in Bash
Sneak Peek
03Creating
Sneak Peek

Module 12

XML

5 Lessons

01XML
Sneak Peek
02Extracting an XML Value in Bash With xml_grep
Sneak Peek
03Formatting and Transforming XML with XSLT
Sneak Peek
04How to Create XML Files in Bash With xsltproc
Sneak Peek
05Auto-Formatting
Sneak Peek

Module 13

Images

6 Lessons

01Images
Sneak Peek
02How to Take Screenshots in Ubuntu Linux With Shortcuts and Bash
Sneak Peek
03Resize, Convert, and Crop Pictures With ImageMagick mogrify
Sneak Peek
04How to Create a Video From Images With ffmpeg
Sneak Peek
05How to Create Graphs From Terminal With Graphviz
Sneak Peek
06How to Remove and Edit Metadata From Photos With exif
Sneak Peek

Module 14

Archiving and Compression

5 Lessons

01Archiving and Compression
Sneak Peek
02Beginner's Guide to tar Commands to Compress and Extract Files
Sneak Peek
03Plain gzip
Sneak Peek
04Zip
Sneak Peek
05Other formats
Sneak Peek

Module 15

SSH

6 Lessons

01SSH
Sneak Peek
02How to Connect to an SSH Host Interactively
Sneak Peek
03How to Create and Store SSH Keys in Bash
Sneak Peek
04How to Execute Bash Scripts on Remote Server Non-Interactively
Sneak Peek
05How to Access an SSH Server Behind a Jump Server
Sneak Peek
06How to Exit SSH and Close a Hung Connection
Sneak Peek

Module 16

From the Terminal to Production

8 Lessons

01From the Terminal to Production
Sneak Peek
02The Portable Shebang Line to Run Bash Scripts Anywhere
Sneak Peek
03How to Write Readable man Documentation For Your Bash Scripts
Sneak Peek
04How to Build a Fail-Fast, Safe Bash Scripts
Sneak Peek
05How to Check Shell Version From a Bash Script
Sneak Peek
06How to Parse Bash Command Line Arguments
Sneak Peek
07How to Include Files in Bash Command Line Arguments
Sneak Peek
08How to Restrict Variable and Function Scope in Bash Scripts
Sneak Peek

Module 17

Fail–Fast Settings

6 Lessons

01Fail–Fast Settings
Sneak Peek
02How to Exit Bash Script on Error With errexit
Sneak Peek
03How to Prevent a Bash Script From Overwriting Files With noclobber
Sneak Peek
04Make Bash Treat Undefined Variables as Errors With nounset
Sneak Peek
05How to Set Bash pipefail to Add Exit Codes to Scripts
Sneak Peek
06How to Fail a Bash Glob if it Returns no Files With failglob
Sneak Peek

Module 18

Version Control

4 Lessons

01Version Control
Sneak Peek
02How to Start Using and Configure Git in Bash Terminal
Sneak Peek
03How to Use Git in Bash Terminal to Push, Pull, and Commit Code
Sneak Peek
04Git gud
Sneak Peek

Module 19

Quality Assurance

3 Lessons

01Quality Assurance
Sneak Peek
02The Beginner's Guide to Bash Linter
Sneak Peek
03How to Test Bash Scripts
Sneak Peek

Module 20

Signals

3 Lessons

01An Intro to Bash Signals: SIGINT, SIGKILL, SIGQUIT, and SIGTERM
Sneak Peek
02How to Send Signals From Bash
Sneak Peek
03How to Handle Signals and Errors in Bash Scripts
Sneak Peek

Module 21

Autocompletion

3 Lessons

01Autocompletion
Sneak Peek
02How to Install Bash Autocompletions
Sneak Peek
03How to Write an Autocompletion for a Bash Script
Sneak Peek

Module 22

Summary and Changelog

2 Lessons

01Summary
Sneak Peek
02Changelog
Sneak Peek

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What Students are Saying

Meet the Course Instructor

Victor Engmark

👋 My name is Victor Engmark. I have been a software developer since 2004, free and open source software contributor since 2007, Stack Overflow & Stack Exchange contributor since 2009, and a Bash user since 2010. I’ve spent thousands of hours reading about Bash, answering questions about Bash and, most importantly, writing Bash for use in production systems.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this course for?

This book is aimed at software developers mainly working in some other language who want to get better at using the CLI and writing Bash Scripts.

What if I need help?

You can ask us questions anytime through the community Discord channel.

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Community

The newline Guide to Bash Scripting

01Remote

02Self-Paced

03Community

04Structured

Audience

newline Pro Subscription

Course Syllabus and Content

Introduction

Self–Help

Running Scripts

Editing Commands and Scripts

Copying and Pasting

Listing Files

Text

Math

Time

Output

JSON

XML

Images

Archiving and Compression

SSH

From the Terminal to Production

Fail–Fast Settings

Version Control

Quality Assurance

Signals

Autocompletion

Summary and Changelog

Subscribe for a Free Lesson

What Students are Saying

Meet the Course Instructor

Victor Engmark

Purchase the course today

One-Time Purchase

newline Pro Subscription

Frequently Asked Questions