[ale] Topic for next ALE NW meeting June 16th

[David S. Jackson]

On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 10:46:23AM -0400 Dow Hurst <dhurst at kennesaw.edu> wrote:
> Have a 30 minute tutorial on shell usage in Linux from the basics of how 
> you use it to what you use it for.
> 

I wouldn't mind giving this a shot.  I don't know whether I *really*
know shells, but I think I could explain and show how a beginner could
become an intermediate user simply by using the shell effectively.

Seems to me, new folks want to use a file manager because it seems
easier and they're familiar with the concept.  But I'd like to explain
how the shell is a much more powerful and flexible tool and that there
are many times when a file manager is not available, whereas the shell
always is (in some shape or form).

Just off the top of my head, perhaps a quickie outline like the
following could help:

I	Basics
	history of shells
	Files, input/output, directories
	top 20 commands and switches -- "man" is your friend
	background, foreground processes
	special characters
	pipes, redirection, stdout, stdin, stderr
	pick your editor
	vi/emacs command line editing modes
	using history
	tab completion

II	Customizing Environment
	aliases, variables, options, 
	.bash_profile, .bash_logout, .bashrc
	what are /etc/skel, /usr/share/skel etc?

III	Basic Programming
	scripts vs functions
	basic flow control: for, if/elif/then/else, case etc
	command substitution
	condition tests and file attribute operators
	reading user input
	string comparison
	exit statuses
	bash math (such as it is)
	positional parameters
	pattern matching "mv ${file%%.*}.new ${file%%.*}.old"
	here documents

IV	Advanced topics (for future self study)
	advanced flow control
	process handling: subshells, subprocesses, job control, trapping
		signals etc.
	debugging scripts


Granted, this is a lot to cover in 30 minutes, so I doubt I'd make it
all the way through the "basic programming" section.  But I figure I
could write a little window manager picking script, or perhaps a small
mp3 front end script, and the folks could just study it and pick up from
whereever I/we leave off.

Naturally, I'd like to share this creation process with the list to make
sure I'm not spreading "bad foo".  :-)

Whadya'll think?

-- 
David S. Jackson                        dsj at dsj.net
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I'm going to give my psychoanalyst one more year,
then I'm going to Lourdes.  -- Woody Allen

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