Episode 33 - Shell Scripting

Better late then never eh? Reall life issues kept me from editing last weeks show so it's being released a little late. I hope to release this weeks episode by Thursday though.

Anyways Episode 33 is an introduction to (Unix/Linux) shell scripting. We discuss what the *nix shell is, highlight the well knows shells (Bourne, Korn, Bash and C). We then proceed to tell you some of the things you can use when writing shell scripts:

#   - The comment
#!  - "Hash bang" the most important part of any script. Should be the first line of any
      script (eg: #!/bin/bash)
$   - The variable symbol (eg: $bolletje)
$() - Evalaute the command (eg: bolletje=$(ls). The variable $boletje then holds the
      output of the 'ls' command
${} - Ensure the variable is resolved properly (eg: if $bolletje has the value "file",
      if you do: $bolletje.txt, the system will try and retrieve the value of the variable
      $bolletje.txt where as if you do: ${bolletje}.txt the system will retrieve the value
      of $bolletje and append .txt to the outcome.

We further discuss loops, arrays and basics programming functionality found in the *nix shells. And we discuss the need of 'chmod +x' to make script executable.

Links:
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx">Microsoft Power Shell</a>
<a href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_shell">Wikipedia - Unix Shell</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_scripting">Wikipedia - Shell Scripting</a>

End Song: <a href="http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2006/04/14/thing-a-week-29-code-monkey/">Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey</a>
Runtime: 29:28