Preface

In this book, we are writing a variety of scripts using Bash, or the Bourne Again Shell. They range from simple to more complex and handy utilities or programs. Currently, Bash is the default shell used by most GNU/Linux distributions and is used ubiquitously within the Linux Terminal. It can be used for any number of tasks and is flexible across the Linux/Unix ecosystem. In other words, a user familiar with Bash and the Linux CLI can install it themselves on almost any other Linux system and perform similar tasks with a negligible amount of alterations (if any are required at all). Bash scripts can also still work with few dependencies on other software installed, and on a very lean system (minimal installation), a user can still write a powerful script to automate tasks or assist with repeated task execution.

This cookbook focuses entirely on Bash usage in an Ubuntu environment, a very common Linux distribution, but it should be portable to other distributions with relative ease. This book is not written for direct usage on Apple or Windows OSes even though it is possible to port elements over to them.