A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming (2nd Edition)

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming (2nd Edition)

Authors	Year	Pages	Publisher	Dimensions, inch.	File type	Size, Mb	First 20 pages
Mark G. Sobell	2009	1081	Prentice Hall	8.26x11	PDF	7	First 20 pages

Book Description
For use with all versions of Linux, including Ubuntu,™ Fedora,™ openSUSE,™ Red Hat,® Debian, Mandriva, Mint, and now OS X, too!

• Get more done faster, and become a true Linux guru by mastering the command line!
• Learn from hundreds of realistic, high-quality examples
• NEW! Coverage of the Mac OS X command line and its unique tools
• NEW! Expert primer on automating tasks with Perl

The Most Useful Linux Tutorial and Reference, with Hundreds of High-Quality Examples for Every Distribution–Now Covers OS X and Perl, Too!

To be truly productive with Linux, you need to thoroughly master shells and the command line. Until now, you had to buy two books to gain that mastery: a tutorial on fundamental Linux concepts and techniques, plus a separate reference. Now, there’s a far better solution. Renowned Linux expert Mark Sobell has brought together comprehensive, insightful guidance on the tools system administrators, developers, and power users need most, and an outstanding day-to-day reference, both in the same book.

This book is 100 percent distribution and release agnostic: You can use it with any Linux system, now and for years to come. Use Macs, too? This new edition adds comprehensive coverage of the Mac OS X command line, including essential OS X-only tools and utilities other Linux/UNIX books ignore.

Packed with hundreds of high-quality, realistic examples, this book gives you Linux from the ground up: the clearest explanations and most useful knowledge about everything from filesystems to shells, editors to utilities, and programming tools to regular expressions. Sobell has also added an outstanding new primer on Perl, the most important programming tool for Linux admins seeking to automate complex, time-consuming tasks.

A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, Second Edition, is the only book to deliver

• Better, more realistic examples covering tasks you’ll actually need to perform
• Deeper insight, based on Sobell’s immense knowledge of every Linux and OS X nook and cranny
• A start-to-finish primer on Perl for every system administrator
• In-depth coverage of basic and advanced Linux shell programming with bash and tcsh
• Practical explanations of 100 core utilities, from aspell to xargs–including Mac OS X specific utilities from ditto to SetFile
• All-new coverage of automating remote backups with rsync
• Dozens of system security tips, including step-by-step walkthroughs of implementing secure communications using ssh and scp
• Tips and tricks for customizing the shell and using it interactively from the command line
• Complete guides to high-productivity editing with both vim and emacs
• A comprehensive, 286-page command reference section–now with revised and expanded indexes for faster access to the information you need
• Instructions for updating systems automatically with apt-get and yum
• Dozens of exercises to help you practice and gain confidence
• And much more, including coverage of BitTorrent, gawk, sed, find, sort, bzip2, and regular expressions

Detailed explanation: ID 10002

Editorial Reviews

Praise for the First Edition of A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming 

“First Sobell taught people how to use Linux…now he teaches you the power of Linux. A must-have book for anyone who wants to take Linux to the next level.”
—Jon “maddog” Hall, Executive Director, Linux International

“This book is a very useful tool for anyone who wants to ‘look under the hood’ so to speak, and really start putting the power of Linux to work. What I find particularly frustrating about man pages is that they never include examples. Sobell, on the other hand, outlines very clearly what the command does and then gives several common, easy-tounderstand examples that make it a breeze to start shell programming on one’s own. As with Sobell’s other works, this is simple, straight-forward, and easy to read. It’s a great book and will stay on the shelf at easy arm’s reach for a long time.”
—Ray Bartlett, Travel Writer

“Overall I found this book to be quite excellent, and it has earned a spot on the very front of my bookshelf. It covers the real ‘guts’ of Linux—the command line and its utilities—and does so very well. Its strongest points are the outstanding use of examples, and the Command Reference section. Highly recommended for Linux users of all skill levels. Well done to Mark Sobell and Prentice Hall for this outstanding book!”
—Dan Clough, Electronics Engineer and Slackware Linux user

“Totally unlike most Linux books, this book avoids discussing everything via GUI and jumps right into making the power of the command line your friend.”
—Bjorn Tipling, Software Engineer, ask.com

“This book is the best distro-agnostic, foundational Linux reference I’ve ever seen, out of dozens of Linux-related books I’ve read. Finding this book was a real stroke of luck. If you want to really understand how to get things done at the command line, where the power and flexibility of free UNIX-like OSes really live, this book is among the best tools you’ll find toward that end.”
—Chad Perrin, Writer, TechRepublic

Praise for Other Books by Mark G. Sobell

“I keep searching for books that collect everything you want to know about a subject in one place, and keep getting disappointed. Usually the books leave out some important topic, while others go too deep in some areas and must skim lightly over the others. A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® is one of those rare books that actually pulls it off. Mark G. Sobell has created a single reference for Red Hat Linux that can’t be beat! This marvelous text (with a 4-CD set of Linux Fedora Core 2 included) is well worth the price. This is as close to an ‘everything you ever needed to know’ book that I’ve seen. It’s just that good and rates 5 out of 5.”
—Ray Lodato, Slashdot contributor

“Mark Sobell has written a book as approachable as it is authoritative.”
—Jeffrey Bianchine, Advocate, Author, Journalist

“Excellent reference book, well suited for the sysadmin of a Linux cluster, or the owner of a PC contemplating installing a recent stable Linux. Don’t be put off by the daunting heft of the book. Sobell has strived to be as inclusive as possible, in trying to anticipate your system administration needs.”
—Wes Boudville, Inventor

“A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux® is a brilliant book. Thank you Mark Sobell.”
—C. Pozrikidis, University of California at San Diego

“This book presents the best overview of the Linux operating system that I have found. . . . [It] should be very helpful and understandable no matter what the reader’s background: traditional UNIX user, new Linux devotee, or even Windows user. Each topic is presented in a clear, complete fashion, and very few assumptions are made about what the reader knows. . . . The book is extremely useful as a reference, as it contains a 70-page glossary of terms and is very well indexed. It is organized in such a way that the reader can focus on simple tasks without having to wade through more advanced topics until they are ready.”
—Cam Marshall, Marshall Information Service LLC, Member of Front Range UNIX Users Group [FRUUG], Boulder, Colorado

“Conclusively, this is THE book to get if you are a new Linux user and you just got into the RH/Fedora world. There’s no other book that discusses so many different topics and in such depth.”
—Eugenia Loli-Queru, Editor in Chief, OSNews.com

About the Author
Mark G. Sobell is President of Sobell Associates Inc., a consulting firm that special­izes in UNIX/Linux training, support, and custom software development. He has more than twenty-five years of experience working with UNIX and Linux systems and is the author of many best-selling books, including A Practical Guide to Fedora™ and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, Fourth Edition; A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux®, Second Edition; and A Practical Guide to UNIX®for Mac OS® X Users (coauthored with Peter Seebach), all from Prentice Hall; and A Practical Guide to the UNIX System from Addison-Wesley.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming explains how to work with the Linux operating system from the command line. The first few chapters quickly bring readers with little computer experience up to speed. The rest of the book is appropriate for more experienced computer users. This book does not describe a particular release or distribution of Linux but rather pertains to all recent versions of Linux.

Command line interface (CLI). In the beginning there was the command line (textual) interface (CLI), which enabled you to give Linux commands from the command line. There was no mouse or icons to drag and drop. Some programs, such as emacs, implemented rudimentary windows using the very minimal graphics available in the ASCII character set. Reverse video helped separate areas of the screen. Linux was born and raised in this environment.

Naturally all of the original Linux tools were invoked from the command line. The real power of Linux still lies in this environment, which explains why many Linux professionals work exclusively from the command line. Using clear descriptions and lots of examples, this book shows you how to get the most out of your Linux system using the command line interface.

Linux distributions. A Linux distribution comprises the Linux kernel, utilities, and application programs. Many distributions are available, including Debian, Red Hat, Fedora Core, SUSE, Mandriva (formerly Mandrake), KNOPPIX, and Slackware. Although the distributions differ from one another in various ways, all of them rely on the Linux kernel, utilities, and applications. This book is based on the code that is common to most distributions. As a consequence you can use it regardless of which distribution you are running.

Overlap. If you read A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux®: Fedora Core™ and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Second Edition, or a subsequent edition, you will notice some overlap between that book and the one you are reading now. The introduction, the appendix on regular expressions, and the chapters on the utilities (Chapter 3 of this book--not Part V), the filesystem, and programming tools are very similar in the two books. The three chapters that cover the Bourne Again Shell (bash) have been expanded and rewritten for this text. Chapters that appear in this book and but not in A Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux,® Second Edition, include those covering the vim and emacs editors, the TC Shell (tcsh), the gawk and sed languages, and Part V, which describes 80 of the most useful Linux utility programs in detail.

Audience. This book is designed for a wide range of readers. It does not require programming experience, although some experience using a general-purpose computer is helpful. It is appropriate for the following readers:

• Students taking a class in which they use Linux
• Power users who want to explore the power of Linux from command line
• Professionals who use Linux at work
• System administrators who need a deeper understanding of Linux and the tools that are available to them
• Computer science students who are studying the Linux operating system
• Programmers who need to understand the Linux programming environment
• Technical executives who want to get a grounding in Linux

Benefits. A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming gives you an in-depth understanding of how to use Linux from the command line. Regardless of your background, it offers the knowledge you need to get on with your work: You will come away from this book understanding how to use Linux, and this text will remain a valuable reference for years to come.

Features of This Book
This book is organized for ease of use in different situations. For example, you can read it from cover to cover to learn command line Linux from the ground up. Alternatively, once you are comfortable using Linux, you can use this book as a reference: Look up a topic of interest in the table of contents or index and read about it. Or, refer to one of the utilities covered in Part V, “Linux Utility Programs.” You can also think of this book as a catalog of Linux topics: Flip through the pages until a topic catches your eye. The book also includes many pointers to Web sites where you can get additional information: Consider the Web an extension of this book.

A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming offers the following features:

• Optional sections allow you to read the book at different levels, returning to more difficult material when you are ready to tackle it.
• Caution boxes highlight procedures that can easily go wrong, giving you guidance before you run into trouble.
• Tip boxes highlight places in the text where you can save time by doing something differently or when it may be useful or just interesting to have additional information.
• Security boxes point out ways that you can make a system more secure.
• The Supporting Web site will include corrections to the book, downloadable examples from the book, pointers to useful Web sites, and answers to even-numbered exercises.
• Concepts are illustrated by practical examples found throughout the book.
• The many useful URLs (Internet addresses) identify sites where you can obtain software and information.
• Chapter summaries review the important points covered in each chapter.
• Review exercises are included at the end of each chapter for readers who want to hone their skills. Answers to even-numbered exercises are available at www.sobell.com.
• Important GNU tools, including gcc, gdb, GNU Configure and Build System, make, gzip, and many others, are described in detail.
• Pointers throughout the book provide help in obtaining online documentation from many sources, including the local system and the Internet.

Contents
This section describes the information that each chapter covers and explains how that information can help you take advantage of the power of Linux. You may want to review the table of contents for more detail.

Chapter 1: Welcome to Linux

Presents background information on Linux. This chapter covers the history of Linux, explains how the GNU project helped Linux get started, and discusses some of Linux’s important features that distinguish it from other operating systems.

Part I: The Linux Operating System
Part I introduces Linux and gets you started using it.

TIP: Experienced Users May Want to Skim Part I
If you have used a UNIX/Linux system before, you may want to skim or skip some or all of the chapters in Part I. All readers should take a look at “Conventions Used in This Book,” which explains the typographic conventions that this book uses, and “Getting the Facts: Where to Find Documentation,” which points you toward both local and remote sources of Linux documentation.
Chapter 2: Getting Started

Explains the typographic conventions that this book uses to make explanations clearer and easier to read. This chapter provides basic information and explains how to log in, change your password, give Linux commands using the shell, and find system documentation.

Chapter 3: Command Line Utilities

Explains the command line interface (CLI) and briefly introduces more than 30 command line utilities. Working through this chapter gives you a feel for Linux and introduces some of the tools you will use day in and day out. The utilities covered in this chapter include

grep, which searches through files for strings of characters;
unix2dos, which converts Linux text files to Windows format;
tar, which creates archive files that can hold many other files;
bzip2 and gzip, which compress files so that they take up less space on disk and allow you to transfer them over a network more quickly; and
diff, which displays the differences between two text files.
Chapter 4: The Linux Filesystem

Discusses the Linux hierarchical filesystem, covering files, filenames, pathnames, working with directories, access permissions, and hard and symbolic links. Understanding the filesystem allows you to organize your data so that you can find information quickly. It also enables you to share some of your files with other users while keeping other files private.

Chapter 5: The Shell

Explains how to use shell features to make your work faster and easier. All of the features covered in this chapter work with both the bash and tcsh. This chapter discusses

Using command-line options to modify the way a command works;
How a minor change in a command line can redirect input to a command to come from a file instead of the keyboard;
How to redirect output from a command to go to a file instead of the screen;
Using pipes to send the output of one utility directly to another utility... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Detailed explanation: ID 10002