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45. Shell Programming for the Initiated

Contents:
Beyond the Basics
The Story of : # #!
Don't Need a Shell for Your Script? Don't Use One
Fun with #!
A File That Shows Itself... and What #! Does
Making Sure Your Script Runs with Bourne Shell, Without #!
The exec Command
Handling Signals to Child Processes
The Unappreciated Bourne Shell ":" Operator
Removing a File Once It's Opened - for Security and Easy Cleanup
The Multipurpose jot Command
Parameter Substitution
Save Disk Space and Programming: Multiple Names for a Program
Finding the Last Command-Line Argument
How to Unset all Command-Line Parameters
Standard Input to a for Loop
Making a for Loop with Multiple Variables
Using basename and dirname
A while Loop with Several Loop Control Commands
Overview: Open Files and File Descriptors
n>&m: Swap Standard Output and Standard Error
Handling Files Line-by-Line
The Ins and Outs of Redirected I/O Loops
A Shell Can Read a Script from its Standard Input, But...
Shell Scripts On-the-Fly from Standard Input
Quoted hereis Document Terminators: sh vs. csh
Turn Off echo for "Secret" Answers
Quick Reference: expr
Testing Characters in a String with expr
Grabbing Parts of a String
Nested Command Substitution
A Better read Command: grabchars
Testing Two Strings with One case Statement
Arrays in the Bourne Shell
Using a Control Character in a Script
Shell Lockfile

45.1 Beyond the Basics

This chapter has a bunch of tricks and techniques for programming with the Bourne shell. Some of them are documented but hard to find; others aren't documented at all. Here is a summary of this chapter's articles:

- JP


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