It is easy to dismiss bash — the typical Linux shell program — as just a command prompt that allows scripting. Bash, however, is a full-blown programming language. I wouldn’t presume to tell you that ...

Check if a file is really a file, whether a string contains anything, and whether you can run a program with these vital patterns.

Here are some basic skills to get started with bash, one of the best shells for preparing and using scripts on Linux. Scripting in Linux–putting commands into a file so you can run them as a group—is ...

How a simple script can transform your desktop cleanup.

I've got a little FreeBSD box running as a web/mail server. Every so often I'll make some tarball backups of important files and directories. First, there's the important system configuration stuff, ...

Shell scripting is one of those skills that are absolutely invaluable on especially UNIX and BSD-based systems like the BSDs, the two zillion Linux distributions as well as MacOS. Yet not every shell ...

Jack Wallen shows how you can create a Linux shell script that requires a password without having to save a password within the script. Image: dennizn/Adobe Stock ...

While administrators scramble to fix the newly discovered Shellshock vulnerability, Harvard University researchers are putting the finishing touches on a scripting language built to mitigate the ...

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