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Mastering Linux Shell Scripting
Second Edition

A practical guide to Linux command-line, Bash scripting, and Shell

programming

Mokhtar Ebrahim
Andrew Mallett
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Mastering Linux Shell
Scripting Second Edition
Copyright © 2018 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information
presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied.
Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products
mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the
accuracy of this information.

Commissioning Editor: Vijin Boricha

Acquisition Editor: Rohit Rajkumar
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First published: December 2015

Second edition: April 2018

Production reference: 1180418

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78899-055-4

www.packtpub.com
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Contributors
About the authors
Mokhtar Ebrahim started working as a Linux system administrator
in 2010. He is responsible for maintaining, securing, and
troubleshooting Linux servers for multiple clients around the world.
He loves writing shell and Python scripts to automate his work. He
writes technical articles on the Like Geeks website about Linux,
Python, web development, and server administration. He is a father
to a beautiful girl and a husband to a faithful wife.
I would like to thank my wife for helping me with all her efforts to finish this book. Thank you, Doaa, for being
a part of that. Also, I would like to thank everyone at Packt for working with me to make sure the book is
released. Last but not least, I'd like to thank Brian Fox, the author of the bash shell, for creating such an
awesome piece of software; without it, such a book would not exist.

Andrew Mallett is the owner of The Urban Penguin, and he is a

comprehensive provider of professional Linux software development,
training, and services. Having always been a command-line fan, he
feels that so much time can be saved through knowing command-
line shortcuts and scripting. TheUrbanPenguin YouTube channel,
maintained by Andrew, has well over 800 videos to support this, and
he has authored four other Packt titles.
About the reviewer
Sebastiaan Tammer is a Linux enthusiast from The Netherlands.
After attaining his BSc in Information Sciences, he graduated with
MSc in Business Informatics, both from Utrecht University. His
professional career started in Java development before he pivoted
into Linux.

He has worked on number of technologies, such as Puppet, Chef,

Docker, and Kubernetes. He spends a lot of time in and around his
terminal of choice: bash. Whether it is creating complex scripting
solutions or just automating simple tasks, there is hardly anything he
hasn't done with bash!
I would like to thank my girlfriend, Sanne, for all the help and support she has given me throughout the years.
She has had to endure the late nights studying, me fixing stuff (which I had inevitably broken only hours
earlier), and my endless storytelling about all those exciting new technologies. Thanks for the enormous
amount of patience and love, I could not have done it without you!
Packt is searching for authors
like you
If you're interested in becoming an author for Packt, please visit autho
rs.packtpub.com and apply today. We have worked with thousands of

developers and tech professionals, just like you, to help them share
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Table of Contents
Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Mastering Linux Shell Scripting Second Edition

Packt Upsell

Why subscribe?

PacktPub.com

Contributors

About the authors

About the reviewer

Packt is searching for authors like you

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the example code files

Download the color images

Conventions used

Get in touch

Reviews

1. The What and Why of Scripting with Bash

Technical requirements

Types of Linux shells

What is bash scripting?

The bash command hierarchy

Command type

Command PATH

Preparing text editors for scripting

Configuring vim

Configuring nano

Configuring gedit

Creating and executing scripts

 Hello World!

Executing the script

Checking the exit status

Ensuring a unique name

Hello Dolly!

Running the script with arguments

The importance of correct quotes

Printing the script name

Declaring variables

User-defined variables

Environment variables

Variable scope

Command substitution

Debugging your scripts

Summary

Questions

Further reading

2. Creating Interactive Scripts

Technical requirements

Using echo with options

Basic script using read

Script comments

Enhancing scripts with read prompts

Limiting the number of entered characters

Controlling the visibility of the entered text

Passing options

Passing parameters with options

Read options values

Try to be standard
Enhancing learning with simple scripts

Backing-up with scripts

Connecting to a server

Version 1 – ping

Version 2 – SSH

Version 3 – MySQL/MariaDB

Reading files
 Summary
Questions

Further reading
3. Conditions Attached

Technical requirements
Simple decision paths using command-line lists

Verifying user input with lists

Using the test shell built-in

Testing strings
Testing integers

Testing file types

Creating conditional statements using if

Extending if with else

Test command with the if command

Checking strings
Checking files and directories

Checking numbers
Combining tests

More conditions with elif

Creating the backup2.sh using elif

Using case statements

Recipe – building a frontend with grep

Summary
Questions

Further reading
4. Creating Code Snippets

Technical requirements
Abbreviations

Using code snippets

Bringing color to the Terminal

Creating snippets using VS Code

Summary

Questions
Further reading

5. Alternative Syntax
Technical requirement
 Recapping the test command
Testing files

Adding logic
Square brackets as not seen before

Providing parameter defaults

Variables
Special parameters

Setting defaults
When in doubt – quote!
Advanced tests using [[
White space

Other advanced features

Pattern matching
Regular expressions
Regular expression script

Arithmetic operations using ((

Simple math
Parameter manipulation
Standard arithmetic tests

Summary
Questions
Further reading
6. Iterating with Loops

Technical requirement
for loops
Advanced for loops
The IFS

Counting directories and files

C-style for loops 
Nested loops
Redirecting loop output

Controlling the loop

while loops and until loops
Reading input from files
Creating operator menus

Summary
 Questions
Further reading
7. Creating Building Blocks with Functions

Technical requirements
Introducing functions
Passing parameters to functions

Passing arrays
Variable scope
Returning values from functions
Recursive functions

Using functions in menus

Summary
Questions
Further reading

8. Introducing the Stream Editor

Technical requirements
Using grep to display text
Displaying received data on an interface

Displaying user account data

Listing the number of CPUs in a system
Parsing CSV files
The CSV file

Isolating catalog entries

Understanding the basics of sed
The substitute command
Global replacement

Limiting substitution
Editing the file
Other sed commands
The delete command

The insert and append commands

The change command
The transform command
Multiple sed commands

Summary
Questions
 Further reading
9. Automating Apache Virtual Hosts

Technical requirements
Apache name-based Virtual Hosts
Creating the virtual host template
First steps

Isolating lines
sed script files
Automating virtual host creation
Prompting for data during site creation

Summary
Questions
Further reading
10. AWK Fundamentals

Technical requirements
The history behind AWK
Displaying and filtering content from files
AWK variables

User-defined variables
Conditional statements
The if command
while loops

for loops
Formatting output
Further filtering to display users by UID
AWK control files

Built-in functions
Summary
Questions
Further reading

11. Regular Expressions

Technical requirements
Regular expression engines
Defining BRE patterns

Anchor characters
The dot character
 The character class
Ranges of characters

Special character classes

The asterisk
Defining ERE patterns
The question mark

The plus sign

Curly braces
The pipe character
Expression grouping

Using grep
Summary

Questions

Further reading
12. Summarizing Logs with AWK

Technical requirements

The HTTPD log file format

Displaying data from web logs

Selecting entries by date

Summarizing 404 errors

Summarizing HTTP access codes

Resources hits
Identify image hotlinking

Displaying the highest ranking IP address

Displaying the browser data

Working with email logs

Summary
Questions

Further reading

13. A Better lastlog with AWK

Technical requirements

Using AWK ranges to exclude data

The lastlog command

Horizontally filtering rows with AWK

Counting matched rows

Conditions based on the number of fields
 Manipulating the AWK record separator to report on XML data

Apache Virtual Hosts

XML catalog

Summary

Questions
Further reading

14. Using Python as a Bash Scripting Alternative

Technical requirements

What is Python?

Saying Hello World the Python way

Pythonic arguments

Supplying arguments

Counting arguments
Significant whitespace

Reading user input

Using Python to write to files

String manipulation

Summary
Questions

Further reading

Assessments
Chapter 1

Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11
Chapter 12

Chapter 13
Chapter 14

Other Books You May Enjoy

Leave a review - let other readers know what you think
Preface
First, you'll learn about Linux shells and why we chose the bash
shell. Then, you'll learn how to write a simple bash script and how to
edit your bash script using Linux editors.

Following this, you will learn how to define a variable and the
visibility of a variable. After this, you will learn how to store
command execution output into a variable, which is called command
substitution. Also, you will learn how to debug your code using bash
options and Visual Studio Code. You will learn how to make your
bash script interactive to the user by accepting input from the user
using the read command. Then, you will learn how to read options
and its values if the user passed them to the script. Following this,
you will learn how to write conditional statements such as if
statements and how to use case statements. After this, you will
learn how to create code snippets using vim and Visual Studio Code.
For repetitive tasks, you will see how to write for loops, how to
iterate over simple values, and how to iterate over directory content.
Also, you will learn how to write nested loops. Along with this, you
will write while and until loops. Then, we will move on to functions,
the reusable chunks of code. You will learn how to write functions
and how to use them. After this, you will be introduced to one of the
best tools in Linux, which is Stream Editor. As we are still talking
about text processing, we will introduce AWK, one of the best text
processing tools in Linux that you will ever see.

After this, you will learn how to empower your text processing skills
by writing better regular expressions. Finally, you will be introduced
to Python as an alternative to bash scripting.
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