S5

UNIX Shell Programming for Developers Course Overview

This Unix Shell Programming training course is designed to give delegates practical experience in developing and writing shell scripts.  Most of the built-in unix shell commands are introduced together with the main program control structures.  The course also gives practical experience using a range of UNIX tools to manipulate text and incorporate into UNIX shell scripts.

Skills Gained

The delegates will practise:

• Writing simple scripts to enhance basic command output
• Using the various shell quoting mechanisms appropriately
• Manipulating shell variables and user-defined variables in scripts
• Implementing conditional execution facilities
• Using the shell's built-in loop constructs where appropriate
• Writing scripts to trap user interrupts
• User defined Functions
• Developing menu-driven shell scripts
• Backing up and restoring files
• Scheduling background jobs using cron and at
• Using file comparison utilities
• Using the head and tail utilities
• Using the cut and paste utilities
• Using split and csplit
• Identifying and translating characters
• Sorting files
• Using regular expressions
• Translating characters in a file
• Selecting text from files with the grep family of commands
• Editing text files with sed
• Creating programs with awk

Who will the Course Benefit?

Programmers, developers and system administrators who need to construct shell scripts using advanced text handling facilities.

The UNIX Shell Programming for Developers course assumes knowledge of the UNIX Operating System to the level covered in the UNIX Introduction Course.  Some programming experience may also prove advantageous.

Course Objectives

To provide the skills needed to develop and customise unix shell programs and to make effective use of a wide range of standard UNIX programming and development tools.

Pre-Requisite Courses

• UNIX Introduction

Follow-On Courses

• UNIX System Administration
• Oracle SQL
• TCP/IP Networking

NOTE: Course technical content is subject to change without notice.

---

UNIX Shell Programming for Developers Training Course

Course Contents - DAY 1

Course Introduction

• Administration and Course Materials
• Course Structure and Agenda
• Delegate and Trainer Introductions

Session 1: UNIX COMMAND REVIEW

• Basic UNIX commands
• Filename generation characters
• Redirection and pipes

Session 2: GETTING STARTED

• What is a shell script?
• Development guidelines
• Creating and editing shell scripts
• Naming and storing shell scripts
• Executing shell scripts
• Exercise:   Create and run a simple shellscript

Session 3: USING VARIABLES

• Environment variables
• Local variables
• Assigning values to variables
• Accessing variable values
• Using quotes
• Delimiting variable names
• echo control sequences
• Exercises:   Use variables in shellscripts

Session 4: INTEGER ARITHMETIC

• Using the expr command
• Using the (( )) notation
• Exercises:   Use integer arithmetic in shellscripts

Session 5: HANDLING RUN TIME INPUT

• The read command
• Command line arguments and related variables
• Exercise:   Writing an interactive shell script

Session 6: CONDITION TESTING

• The if-then-elif-else statement
• String tests
• Integer tests
• Filename tests
• Other test notations
• Default and substitute variables
• Exit status codes
• Counting characters
• Testing for numeric input
• Exercise:   Add validation to previous scripts

---

UNIX Shell Programming for Developers Training Course

Course Contents - DAY 2

Session 7: LOOP CONSTRUCTS

• The while loop
• The until loop
• The while true and until false loops
• The for loop
• Loop control commands
• Exercises:   Enhance previously written scripts with loop constructs

Session 8: MULTI-BRANCH DECISIONS

• The case statement
• Patterns and actions
• Menu driven applications
• Exercise:   Develop and write a menu system

Session 9: Functions

• What is a function?
• Function syntax
• Exercises:   Create and use functions

Session 10: INTERRUPT HANDLING

• Interrupt signals
• The trap command
• Abnormal termination of scripts
• Exercise:   Adding traps to the menu script

Session 11: ADDITIONAL FEATURES

• The exec command
• The includes notation
• Arrays
• Here Documents
• Exercise:   Enhance scripts

---

UNIX Shell Programming for Developers Training Course

Course Contents - DAY 3

Session 12: REVIEW OF SHELL FUNDAMENTALS

• Review of UNIX Commands

Session 13: USING UNIX SHELLS

• Command line history and editing
• The Korn and POSIX shells
• The Bash shell
• Command aliasing
• The shell startup file
• Shell environment variables

Session 14: REDIRECTION, PIPES AND FILTERS

• Standard I/O and redirection
• Pipes
• Command separation
• Conditional execution
• Grouping Commands
• UNIX filters
• The tee command

Session 15: BACKUP AND RESTORE UTILITIES

• Archive devices
• The cpio command
• The tar command
• The dd command
• Exercise:   Backing up and restoring files using tar
• Exercise:   Backing up and restoring files using cpio

Session 16: BACKGROUND JOB SCHEDULING

• Starting background jobs
• Background tasks and the nohup command
• Process priorities and the nice command
• Job control
• Scheduling jobs with the at command
• Scheduling jobs with the cron command
• Exercise:   Running and background jobs

---

UNIX Shell Programming for Developers Training Course

Course Contents - DAY 4

Session 17: REGULAR EXPRESSION NOTATION

• Regular expressions
• Extended regular expressions

Session 18: SEARCHING FILES FOR PATTERNS

• The grep family of commands
• The grep command
• The fgrep command
• The egrep command
• Exercises:   Search for patterns with grep and egrep

Session 19: THE STREAM EDITOR - sed

• Introduction and command line syntax
• The sed program structure
• sed program processing
• Use sed commands
• sed addresses
• sed instructions
• Hold and get functions
• Advanced flow control
• Exercises:   Simple text processing with sed
• Exercises:   Create sed scripts to edit files

Session 20: COMMANDS FOR COMPARING FILES

• Compare two files with the cmp command
• Compare two files with the comm command
• Compare two files with the diff and sdiff commands
• Compare large files with the bdiff command
• Exercise:   Identifying file differences

Session 21: FILE MANIPULATION COMMANDS

• The head and tail commands
• The cut command
• The paste command
• The pr command
• The split and csplit commands
• Exercises:   Manipulate text with cut and paste
• Exercises:   Manipulate text with head and tail

Session 22: IDENTIFY AND TRANSLATE CHARACTERS

• od - octal dump
• Use cat to display non-printing characters
• The expand and unexpand commands
• The tr command
• Exercises:   Translating text files with tr
• Exercises:   Display non-printing characters

---

UNIX Shell Programming for Developers Training Course

Course Contents - DAY 5

Session 23: SORTING FILES

• The sort command
• Specify sort keys with -k
• Sort by column positions
• The uniq command
• Exercises:   Sorting text files

Session 24: INTRODUCTION TO THE PATTERN SCANNING UTILITY - awk

• Introduction and command line syntax
• The awk program structure
• Use regular expressions
• Operators
• Simple patterns
• Extended patterns
• Comments
• Special patterns (BEGIN and END)
• Program variables
  • Built-in variables
  • User defined variables
• Mathematical operators
• Enhanced printing
• Handling user variables
• Exercises:   Create simple awk scripts
• Exercises:   Create a simple awk script using variables

Session 25: awk PROGRAM CONTROL STRUCTURES

• Program control structures
• The if construct
• The while and do ... while constructs
• The basic for construct
• Associative array handling
• Functions
  • Built in functions
  • The system function
  • The getline function
  • User defined functions
• Exercises:   Create an awk script using an associative array
• Exercises:   Create an awk script using a for loop and if statement
• Exercises:   Create an awk script using functions