tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21547939042616891732026-04-21T17:40:22.389-04:00Learn the Linux command line! Write shell scripts!William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-17589031348484097982026-01-15T11:44:00.000-05:002026-01-15T11:44:22.219-05:00

Announcing The Linux Command Line Seventh Internet Edition and Third Print Edition Good News Everyone!I have just released the Seventh Internet Edition of my book. Along with the Internet Edition release, we're just days away from the general availability of the new print edition which is based on the aforementioned Internet Edition.So what's new? The Seventh Internet Edition is an enhanced

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-6944946298249894542024-11-01T12:38:00.000-04:002024-11-01T12:38:17.764-04:00

After eighteen months of semi-serious effort, I am pleased to announce the release of the 6th Internet Edition. With nearly forty pages of new, additional content, it's perhaps the largest revision since the book's original release in 2009.Highlights of the 6th Internet Edition include:Updated Package Management chapter.Extensive revision of the Storage Devices chapter.Coverage of additional

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-59274156405360074772023-01-18T09:30:00.001-05:002023-01-18T09:30:20.486-05:00

I recently added a paragraph to the Community Translation Policy for The Linux Command Line as follows:Be aware that once you are approved for performing the translation I will add your name and email address to the "Books" page on LinuxCommand.org so that others can contact you regarding your progress and perhaps offer you assistance in the translation.I am hoping that with change I can get some

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-68843802582021997052021-10-20T11:42:00.000-04:002021-10-20T11:42:33.959-04:00

I've just released the first Internet edition of my new book, Adventures with the Linux Command Line. This 250+ page volume is a sequel/supplement to The Linux Command Line (TLCL).  With 14 action-packed chapters, it covers a variety of skill-enhancing topics intended for makers, students, and anyone who wants to take their knowledge of the command line and shell scripting to the next level.

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-56982157608977731732020-10-14T10:59:00.000-04:002020-10-14T10:59:01.874-04:00

That's right, it's been twenty years since I launched the first version of LC.o and began this journey of Linux advocacy and education. Over the years, a lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same.Many years ago, when Linux was young, Linus Torvalds gave a talk at a Linux users group meeting. At this point in Linux history, Linus had to actually use PowerPoint to present his slides as no

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-7176217363519108292020-08-19T15:00:00.000-04:002020-08-19T15:00:12.140-04:00

Structured Query Language (SQL) is the lingua franca of the database world. It's also a useful and important skill. In this adventure, we will look at its major features and techniques, as well as discover a command-line tool that makes SQL easy to use with our scripts and projects.http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_sql.php

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-56962691484501041182020-05-14T11:48:00.001-04:002020-05-14T11:48:53.781-04:00

Good news everyone! I have just posted 2 new adventures! In this two-part series we look at bash script coding standards. In Part 1, we review what a coding standard does and how they work. We next create our own standard called the LinuxCommand Bash Scripting Style Guide. In Part 2, we look at the new_script program, a bash shell script template generator that makes using our new coding

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-43804582889345151522020-03-21T14:13:00.000-04:002020-03-21T14:15:16.078-04:00

We looked at the source builtin a little in TLCL when we were examining how the shell's environment is established with the .profile and .bashrc files. In this adventure, we will delve further into how to use this feature to support configuration files and shareable function libraries for our bash scripts. http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_source.php

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-17428188449444007182019-04-28T08:52:00.000-04:002019-04-28T08:52:16.819-04:00

In case you missed it, the second edition of The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction from No Starch Press is now available. This edition, based on the fifth Internet edition of TLCL contains many improvements and modernizations compared to the first edition. If you're looking for a more "tangible" version of TLCL, pick up a copy of The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction, 2nd

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-65648902285259083082019-04-27T15:20:00.000-04:002020-03-21T14:14:29.543-04:00

A few months ago I wrote an adventure but I forgot to announce it. In it, we advance our skill with the vim text editor from the beginner level to an intermediate level. This adventure is one of my favorites so far. I learned a lot while writing it. Vim is a very capable and configurable program. For example, it's easy to configure vim to behave differently according to the type of file it is

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-2777394981696387262019-01-17T05:31:00.000-05:002019-01-17T05:31:51.627-05:00

Good News Everyone! I have just released the 5th Internet edition of my book, The Linux Command Line. This new edition contains hundreds of language refinements and modernizations including updated screenshots and diagrams. You can download the new version here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxcommand/files/TLCL/19.01/TLCL-19.01.pdf/download Be sure to download the file named 

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-33397897226567987382017-10-19T12:13:00.000-04:002017-10-19T12:13:10.552-04:00

Good News Everyone! I have just released the 4th Internet edition of my book, The Linux Command Line. This new edition contains a number of refinements and modernizations. In particular, the example scripts in Part 4 have been improved to increase the robustness of string handling and to serve as better examples of modern coding practice. You can download the new version here: https://

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-22449436348586560462016-07-29T12:30:00.000-04:002016-07-29T12:30:51.577-04:00

Hello Everyone! I have just released a new edition of my book, The Linux Command Line. This version is mostly a maintenance and modernization release. It also fixes several bugs and clarifies a few things, too. You can download it here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxcommand/files/TLCL/16.07/TLCL-16.07.pdf/download Make sure you get the file named TLCL-16.07.pdf. Enjoy! A word about

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-385484728509801242016-06-21T09:59:00.000-04:002020-03-21T14:16:03.853-04:00

Two new Adventures! First, we'll look at some of the other shell programs available to Linux users. Most are of historical interest, but one attempts to do bash one better. Learn more about Other Shells. Second, we'll explore some of the often overlooked features of our most frequently used command line tool-- our terminal emulator. Explore Power Terminals. Enjoy!

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-19343925655883882882016-01-26T09:55:00.000-05:002020-03-21T14:16:26.289-04:00

Another new Adventure! The AWK programming language is one of the truly classic Unix tools still in wide use today. Often embedded in shell scripts or employed directly at the command line, this powerful and elegant text processing and pattern matching language is a must-have for every Linux user's toolbox. In this adventure, we'll try it out.

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-87813576606430111032015-02-05T18:16:00.000-05:002020-03-21T14:16:53.105-04:00

Another new Adventure! dialog is a program that, as the name might suggest, creates dialog boxes in text mode. We can use it to give our scripts a friendly face. In this adventure, we will look at what it does, and how to use it.

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-3596067272477208432015-01-16T09:56:00.000-05:002020-03-21T14:17:21.752-04:00

Another new Adventure! This time we look at some of the hidden power of I/O redirection.

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-5675282354715537332014-11-07T09:54:00.000-05:002020-03-21T14:17:51.792-04:00

Another new Adventure! Tired of looking at the same old text? Learn how to add color and text effects to your scripts with tput.

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-69356786263322451472014-05-12T15:32:00.000-04:002020-03-21T14:18:29.660-04:00

Another new Adventure! Fingers getting tired? Making more mistakes than you should? You should learn to do more with Less Typing!

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-696458599290918522014-03-25T10:17:00.000-04:002020-03-21T14:19:05.982-04:00

I have just posted another Adventure! This one explores terminal multiplexers; programs that allow your terminal to perform clever tricks. Enjoy!

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-20508853071619472182014-03-03T14:47:00.000-05:002020-03-21T14:20:03.852-04:00

I have just posted the first unit of a new series on LinuxCommand.org called Adventures. These are tutorials that supplement my book, The Linux Command Line. The first tutorial in the Adventures series is Midnight Commander. Midnight Commander is a text-based directory browser and file manager. A very powerful and useful program. Look for more Adventures in the coming weeks. Enjoy!

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-45195579715203968182014-01-28T14:29:00.000-05:002014-01-28T14:32:17.229-05:00

I've just added another script to the Resources page. This one, called program_list, creates an annotated listing of the executable files (i.e. programs) in a specified directory, or if no directory is specified, /usr/bin. The listing consists of the program name, a brief description of the program (taken from its man page) and the name of the package that installed the program.  The

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-31109950834492831282014-01-17T14:26:00.000-05:002014-01-17T18:20:22.712-05:00

I have just posted 2 new bash scripts on the Resources page for your edification and enjoyment. They are: my_cloud - A script to store and manage files on a remote server (a kind of stone-age Dropbox). photo2mail - A script that re-sizes images. Used to make image files suitable for use as email attachments. In addition, I have updated new_script to support a more modern coding standard.

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-21095512975193942552013-08-22T15:27:00.000-04:002013-08-22T15:27:37.264-04:00

I have received a number of requests from readers for permission to translate the LinuxCommand.org tutorials and/or The Linux Command Line (book) into various languages. I have been pondering this issue for some time and due to my indecision, I have neglected to respond to these requests while I come up with a policy. I apologize for the delay in getting back to those of you who have made

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2154793904261689173.post-40286720555243677742013-07-12T16:13:00.000-04:002013-07-12T16:13:34.461-04:00

Tweaked, Tuned, and Updated! After many months of delays and distractions, I have finally completed a much needed update of The Linux Command Line. Released under the same Creative Commons license as the original, it is now available in PDF format at linuxcommand.org. What’s New Updated to bash version 4. New features discussed in my blog series on bash version 4 are now included in the

William Shottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06779171864773540708noreply@blogger.com0