11–20 of 34 posts
Learn the shell chainsaw: `xargs`. `xargs -L` vs `xargs` and `xargs -I` (examples will say use `{}` but I'm partial to `xargs -I @` because that works with Fish and Bash, plus it's a single character.
Good starting point
Read the whole POSIX specification for the "Shell Command Language", and in particular how input is processed by the shell through all the multiple expansion passes. https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V... From there, you have a better background for reading the documentation of shell implementations, like Bash. Also study Awk: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/a... Th…
I find Perl to be good for these things.
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/unix-power-tools/059600...
I’d recommend the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ and make peace with the fact that you’ll never know it all and enjoy the journey. Years later you’ll still be stumbling across new stuff.
If you encounter a problem or task, then do it using shell commands. This will push into asking the question "what command can do X?" and "how do I connect command X to command Y?" and "how do loop commands over output?". Then just keep doing that over and over again. Learn the shell chainsaw: `xargs`. `xargs -L` vs `xargs` and `xargs -I` (examples will say use `{}` but I'm partial to `xargs -I @` because that works…
My way is: Try to write small loops and pipes on the command line. I do things like this all the time: for i in foo*.txt; do mv $i OLD-$i; done You'll find this breaks sometimes, so use control-r to recall the command and fix it for i in foo*.txt; do mv "$i" "OLD-$i"; done if it gets too long, copy/paste it into a file like ~/bin/renamer and multiple lines and indenting and make it a more permanent part of your colle…