Feel free to improvise over this outline by adding new sections, chapters etc
This book is an introduction to using the shell with a focus on empowering GNU/Linux newbies. This page has an outline. The book itself is being written at:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/CommandLineIntro/WebHome
It is meant to be fun and encourage the reader to play, so it is not organized in a formal manner (for instance, discussing all metacharacters in one place). Instead, features are introduced in the context of useful tasks. Rarely used features are not discussed.
The main topic is the GNU/Linux Bash shell, but useful features of the Korn shell and zsh may be introduced in advanced chapters. The C family of shells and non-Unix shells are beyond the scope of the book.
It assumes the reader is familiar with graphical interfaces, and refers to one or more free desktop environments where discussions of GUIs are necessary.
- sudo
- su
- Moving around directories
- Pathnames
- simple, absolute, and relative
- The . and .. directories
- cd, pushd, etc.
- Pathnames (syntax)
- Using the history (through the readline facility)
- Emacs mode
- vi mode
- A few useful bits of syntax
- Enclosing strings in quotation marks
- Escaping special characters through quotation marks and backslashes
- Continuing a command over multiple lines
- White space as separators (any amount is treated the same)
- Commands people use every day
- pwd
- ls -al
- cd
- chown
- chmod
- more, less
- mv
- cp
- rm
- wc
- diff
- gzip, gunzip, gzcat
- rm, rmdir
- mkdir
- find
- grep
- passwd
- kill
- telnet, ssh
- ftp
- apt-get, yum
- echo
- setenv, unset
- du -h
- lynx
- ln
- Permissions
- Viewing through ls
- Setting through chmod
- +x syntax
- 777 octal syntax (a figure is useful to show bits
- Manipulating processes
- Interrupting (CTRL-C)
- ps and kill
- Processes and jobs (background)
- Redirection
- Using < and > and variations
- File descriptors (standard input, output, and error)
- Globbing
- The find command
- The "for" control construct
- gedit
- Kedit
- nano
- vi
- Emacs
- Saving useful changes: .bashrc and other startup/shutdown files
- The value of portability (lowest common denominator commands)
- Making scripts executable
- More control constructs (while, until, case, etc.)
- Argument lists
- How to keep the script maintainable
- Use variables
- Know where you begin (which directory, whether you're superuser)
- Look before you leap (does a file you want to read exist, etc.)
- Check error status
- Error messages
- Here documents (the << syntax)
- Sourcing other files
- Restricting access
- Using permissions
- The suid bit
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