The bash book to rule them all

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I usually recommend Data Science At The Command Line https://jeroenjanssens.com/dsatcl/

Not because it explains bash well, but because it fits with my data science/bioinformatics niche. It's all about these funky sort/uniq/rev/cut/uniq/awk/wc/sed patterns I use everyday fiddling with csv files.

> You want to understand why cd is not an executable but a builtin?

Because a sub-process cannot change the working directory of its parent. The shell process needs to change its own working directory. Therefore cd must be a builtin.

Although, I suppose that one might execve a cd binary, which would change directory and then in turn the cd binary would execve the shell that is specified in the $SHELL env var. That would be terribly silly though :p

I believe it's been posted here before, but I also use this for reference whenever I forget the syntax to something, or know there must be a better way than what I am doing.

https://github.com/dylanaraps/pure-bash-bible

Controversial perhaps, but I now use Go where I used to be a prolific shell script script coder.

Main reasons:

   - Fewer opportunities for foot-guns
   - Ease of portability, no dependencies, e.g. no more "is jq installed ?"
   - Consistent cross-platforms, e.g. no more "is this system using GNU sed ?"
   - Modern stuff like crypto, and "internet stuff" is just quicker and easier to do in Go.