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

[Dow Hurst]

With no objections, I'd like to say let's have David present in June and 
  Bob present in July.  We certainly can adjust the duration of segments 
and since shell usage/understanding is so fundamental to Unix/Linux we 
should give David more time.  I'd say with the way everyone loves to 
hang out after the official meeting end time (which I still don't really 
know) we can give David a full hour to go thru the material.  Any more 
thoughts?

I do believe that after the first 6 meetings we should definitely focus 
on deeper topics.  Also, I'd like to point out that a LUG at KSU formed 
by students is not a competition with ALE-NW but is the manifestation of 
ALE-NW as an official KSU student body.  Legally it is needed and 
hopefully will be a magnet for Linux enthusiasts going to school here.

Also, I am buried in the renewal application of the grant that pays my 
salary so am unable to be timely with email replies.  This will continue 
until July 1st.  So I apologize for the long delays on my posts.

Sincerely,
Dow


Geoffrey wrote:
> Sounds like a winner to me.  You can always do a sequel??
> 
> Shall we dub David presenter for June??
> 
> David S. Jackson wrote:
> 
>> 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?
>>
>>
> 
> 



-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                   Office: 770-499-3428
Systems Support Specialist  Fax:    770-423-6744
1000 Chastain Rd.
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:dhurst at kennesaw.edu
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com
Kennesaw, GA 30144
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*Computational Chemistry is fun!*
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