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GNU Bash Reference Manual - Learning made easy Pick of the Week
Bash Reference Manual iconThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]
For last week's (the week of June 14th) Pick of the Week (grossly delayed due to my home connectivity issues), I have actually picked a manual -- a Bash reference manual, no less.

I recently decided to switch from tcsh to bash, given that bash is now the default OS X shell, I figured it was time to cut over and learn something new. But as an occasional user of tcsh, the differences in cutting over to bash were enough to frustrate me ... until Kirk M. pointed me to Chet Ramey and Brian Fox's excellent (and free) Bash Reference Manual. You can purchase this book in stores, or download a free version from the publisher's site.

Although I've only had time to work through a couple of chapters, and then jump around to various bits I wanted to work on (prompts and aliases), I've found it to be well written and relatively easy to follow. I still have a long way to go in my personal cutover to bash, but this book is definitely helping to ease the way...
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Check out the home page...
Authored by: mtowber on Jun 20, '04 11:37:13PM

Other manuals of interest are available in their entirety linked from the home page:
GCC, patch, R, etc...



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Check out the home page...
Authored by: wgscott on Jun 21, '04 02:00:41AM
Rob: Before you sink too much effort into bash, please take a look at zsh. zsh combines the best of tcsh with the best of bash, and then adds a whole lot of other stuff that makes it absolutely fabulous. I let Gary Kerbaugh, after months of persistance, convince me to try it for a weekend, after having been a habitual tcsh junkie for 10 years. I never went back. The transition was absolutely painless. The payoff was fantastic. I put together a brief introductory page:
    zsh on os x


[ Reply to This | # ]
Check out the home page...
Authored by: Black on Jun 21, '04 12:42:31PM

I'll second this. I've been using zsh for over a year now and I really think it is combines the best of the two shells.



[ Reply to This | # ]
i like zsh, but ...
Authored by: sjk on Jun 21, '04 08:32:18PM

Is there a way to make zsh completions lists and other messages display like in tcsh instead of displaying under the current input line then repositioning the cursor to its original location? I can't find any option (e.g. LIST_*) to control that funky completion style and ever time I've tried zsh it's a big reason I go return to tcsh. Also something with how trailing spaces and '/' characters are handled during filename completion, but I can't remember the details right now.



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GNU Bash Reference Manual - Learning made easy
Authored by: dperetti on Jun 21, '04 04:13:04AM
To my opinion, this book : Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide ... is way superior. Absolutely incredible. Lots of examples, tricks, with sources available. Available as pdf or html.

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GNU Bash Reference Manual - Learning made easy
Authored by: kirkmc on Jun 21, '04 05:43:23AM

The Advanced Bash Scripting Guide looks interesting. It took me a while to find the link for the PDF version, however, which is hidden in the introduction:

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/abs-guide.pdf

Enjoy!



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GNU Bash Reference Manual - Learning made easy
Authored by: robg on Jun 21, '04 10:18:39AM

That looks like a great follow-up to the first one -- I wasn't looking specifically for scripting help, just a good overview of bash and some of the basic stuff :). But I've now got this one, for that time when I finish the first one...

Thanks for the pointer;
-rob.



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VI - same info?
Authored by: TvE on Jun 21, '04 05:38:52PM

How about a similair e-book/website/quick intro to VI.

Recomendations anyone

(I am sure there's thousands of guide on the web, but tested and recomendable ones...?)



[ Reply to This | # ]
VI - same info?
Authored by: lpangelrob on Jun 22, '04 12:08:25PM

"vimtutor" is what you're looking for. Best part is, it's already installed!

Open a terminal window and type "vimtutor".

---
-Robert Guico



[ Reply to This | # ]
VI - same info?
Authored by: parakleta on Jul 14, '04 01:26:49AM
I've found this pdf book to be a really good guide. I found it through the vim.org website, which has a lot of other helpful hints as well, much like this site.

vimtutor, as mentioned in a previous reply, doesn't go much past the very basics, and the vim help (just type :help) is quite handy as a reference, once you have an idea what you are trying to do.

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