Rating: 
Summary: If you're byuing only one book on BASH, buy this one
Review: A very good introductory BASH book. The different features of BASH are covered in great detail. Beginners will definitely like the in-depth discussion and examples. The more advanced users will also find this book very useful. The only reason I'm not giving it a "5 star" is because of the example/case used in Programming section. The author used one example to demonstrate different aspects of BASH programming. I found that example a little too complex for a beginner. Since, the whole programming section was centered around that one example, things got more confusing as advanced programming topics were introduced.
But, still it's a very usefull book.
Rating:
Summary: Good Place to Start
Review: Good starter for those taking their first steps in unix shell scripting. The book is easy to read, with examples that are easy to follow. For more intricate techniques get the "Unix Power Tools."
Rating:
Summary: Good Place to Start
Review: Good starter for those taking their first steps in unix shell scripting. The book is easy to read, with examples that are easy to follow. For more intricate techniques get the "Unix Power Tools."
Rating:
Summary: Good intro to Bash
Review: I found this book pretty useful as an intro to Bash, and bash scripting. I found the first three chapters rather useful to configuring Bash, and the following chapters were useful in showing basic bash shell. I can testify to the usefulness of this book by the fact that I have been able to write several successful bash scripts on my computer. My only complaint was the latter chapters on advanced bash programming. These chapters tended to be somewhat hard to read, and a little confusing (hence the 4 starts). All in all, it was money well spent. :) Thanks Bill and Cameron!
Rating:
Summary: Solid coverage of bash fundamentals...
Review: I just finished this book, and I have to say it was definitely worth the money. The authors do a more than credible job of describing the fundamentals of bash without going too deeply into technical minutiae. Not that they don't present some complex examples! I appreciated the fact that the examples in early chapters were revisited and augmented in later chapters as more complex material was presented. People who prefer thick reference-type compendiums that need not be read in a linear fashion may dislike this, but I found it to be quite helpful. Particularly illuminating was the image manipulation script they used as an example in several chapters. It really gave me an idea of the power of scripting. Unfortunately, obtaining the source code for the tools the example relied on and compiling them turned out to be a chore; I finally gave up. Still, I had no problem understanding the example even without actually being able to implement it. And there were plenty of other examples that didn't rely on non-standard unix utilities. If I had to make a single criticism, I'd say that the book could focus a bit more on *interactive* shell use, and why bash is better/worse than other shells in interactive mode. Being a former tcsh user who has developed lots of aliases and programmed completions over time, it would've been helpful to have a section called "Migrating from Csh" or something like that...
Rating:
Summary: Very good book, but could be better
Review: I like this book a lot. It covers all you need to know to fell comfortable with bash shell. However I find the explanation confusing, sometimes I had to read the same paragraph twice to figure out what did the author mean. Also it's not good to use as a reference, since a lot of code depends on previous examples, so one needs to go back to find where this came from. All in all a very good book, didn't see better one, so far.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly pedagogic and enjoyable introduction to Bash/Unix
Review: I review the book from a Unix beginners perspective. I havent finished reading the book yet, but I just cant resist sharing my positive feelings about it. It might very well be true that the book lacks real world examples, as the other reviewers point out. But let me balance this criticism by highliting great strengths that the book has (at least for newcomers to Unix like me). Picking up this book, I had very little knowledge of Unix and I had not read any book on shell programming before. I used to be very sceptical about working with shells having grown up with the easiness of use of GUIs like MS Windows. Thanks to this book I am now dying to get my hands on Linux to start using the Bash shell (for now, I am using Cygwin under NT). The book answers all the questions I used to have about Unix as I was programming on the Solaris platform. Because of this book, I am now deeply fascinated by the simplicity and power of Unix! I want to send my sincere gratitude to the authors!
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction
Review: If you are already using bash, you will probably want to skip parts of the book; nonetheless, it may tell you some shortcuts you missed. There aren't really any large programming examples, though the use of perl probably makes that less of a problem lately. Still, the authors seem to recognize the usefulness of "scripting" directly from the command line. In addition, the book includes a good deal of information on customization and on the differences between versions.
Rating: 
Summary: Lacking examples
Review: Learning the Bash Shell, should be not be called a learning book. The lack of real world examples really hurt this book. I found Unix Shells by Example a much better learning tool for the Bash Shell. This was surprising, since other learning books by O'Reilly are considerably better than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book about bash Programming
Review: Nearly the best book about bash programming. Covers almost every aspect of the bash. Lacks in examples, but thats not a matter, because the author describes all the functions very well.
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