Rating: 
Summary: Concise, Informative, Easy to Read
Review: An excellent book for beginning to intermediate UNIX/ksh users. Clear. To the point. Easy to read. Few "forward references" -- those that exist are clearly explained; i.e., "X is because of Y, which is discussed in Chapter N." No superfluous diagrams or typographic fluff.
Rating: 
Summary: Learning the Korn Shell
Review: I found the book not usefull at all. Simple things on how to write a loop is so full of text without addressing the simple issue of how to write a simple while loop with a counter. I found the examples sparse and irrelevant to what i was doing.
Rating:
Summary: Learning the Korn Shell
Review: I found the book not usefull at all. Simple things on how to write a loop is so full of text without addressing the simple issue of how to write a simple while loop with a counter. I found the examples sparse and irrelevant to what i was doing.
Rating:
Summary: A great book about Korn shell programming
Review: I gave it 5 stars partially because it was given just 1 star unjustly by a few reviewers. From a number of complaining reviews, one realizes that the book title is little misleading. It's not a book for a true beginner wanting to read about "simple" examples of shell programs and looking for detailed explanations line by line. This book is concise, to the point, and really explains "Korn" shell's features. Even as early as chapter 4 about Korn shell basics, things are explained that a long-time shell programmers may not know. If you do and have done serious, real world Korn shell programming, you'll appreciate it.There were also complains about hard to find things in the book. But from my experience, it's not the case if one really reads it from cover to cover and unerstands the topics presented chapter by chapter. I agree that the book may not be a great reference book, but it was not written as one.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but has some flaws
Review: I have owned this book since 1996 and I used it as my introduction to Korn shell programming. To the credit of the book, I was able to become very adept at Korn shell and I have written some amazing scripts. However, I must admit that some sections of this book are misleading, confusing and downright incomprehensible. It took many re-readings of some chapters before the author's lesson was brought to light. I would recommend this book as a Korn shell reference, but it is probably not the best place to start for a Korn shell beginner. I am finding this to be true for a lot of the books by O'Reilly & Associates.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction
Review: I've been a sysadmin for a while, and I was scripting before I picked up this book, but my scripts have improved and grown in complexity and in comprehension. The book covers the material thoroughly, but without getting dull and dry. The examples may or may not be applicable to what your specific needs are at the time, but they serve to illustrate the point that's being made at the time, and they change as more information is introduced. A good index is one of the selling points of any technical book for me, because it predicts how quickly I can find the information I'm looking for when I need it. This one's pretty good. It covers the subject thoroughly, and if you get confused, entering and using the examples from the book will give good practice.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent beginner book
Review: If you are new to the Korn Shell then this is a great buy. Start here to learn Flow Control, Regular Expressions, I/O and command-line processing, background job referencing, and debugging. This text also covers basic emacs and Vi operations as well as ways to customize your environment in UNIX. I picked this book up as a supplement to learning UNIX. The index proved helpful when I was learning a new command or searching for a solution to my problem. I like the book because it is easier to use than trying to scour the web for solutions. This book will at least narrow the task and help you know what to look for on the web.
Rating:
Summary: The Second Book of UNIX(r)
Review: If your job requires you to perform some tasks in UNIX but you know very little beyond the level a beginner's guide gave you (e.g. cd and ls) then Learning the Korn Shell will let you build on those basics to the point where you'll be able to program shell scripts.
You'll start with a quick explanation of what a shell is (i.e. it's a user interface, not the OS itself) then useful key strokes (avoid CTRL-D) and how Korn parses the command line. The book then explains how you can set up your environment and then moves into basic shell scripting. By the end of the book, you'll be able to read and edit the scripts along with your more experienced colleagues.
Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Quick and concise intro to Korn Shell
Review: Korn shell is a Unix shell environment that really comes in handy in most Unix machines, because it provides a flexible and powerful alternative to regular Bourne Shell. This excludes Linux, which uses Bourne Again Shell (bash). Professional IT people who want to work in such Unix environments as Solaris and AIX should definitely take the time to read this book. I really enjoyed how this book covers every aspect of Korn Shell, from setting up your environment files, to writing complex scripts. Most books cover how to program in Korn Shell, but if you can't work in the Korn Shell environment, then it is not easy. I have read both the first and second edition, and I liked first edition alot, but it suffered from some terse examples, and really expected you to be a C programmer. The second edition is a major improvement, in that it has richer examples, and provides better explanations of Korn Shell concepts. In summary, I highly recommend this book for people who want to work in Unix environments (again excluding Linux), particularly IT professionals. This book provides a very comprehensive guide to a very useful tool. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for the beginner - advanced ksh programmer
Review: This is a great book for someone new to ksh programmer. It should be treated as a work manual and not as a reference book. Read this book through from cover to cover and you'll soon be writing ksh scripts with ease. The book takes you though Korn shell basics from answer what a shell is to using files, I/O, and character quoting. From there it goes into command line editing, customizing your environment, and into basic programming. Once through that you learn flow control, arrays, advanced I/O, and process handling. Finally you learn how to debug the script you just wrote. As a reference manual this book is average. It's not meant to be a typical "nutshell" book and shouldn't be treated as one. The bottom line? Buy this book if you are truly interested in learning how to program in the Korn shell.
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