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From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command Line
Some areas are covered in other books, but this one goes into some little-seen side streets and alleyways to show you the shortcuts to more efficient use of the shell. ...The material here is you're not going to get it from the manual pages! I strongly recommend it.
- Ernest J. This is a totally neat idea for a book... the command line gets addictive quickly.
- Bill Ryan, Bill's House O Insomnia This comprehensive, hands-on guide focuses on two of the most popular and feature-rich shells, bash and zsh. From Bash to Z Conquering the Command Line is a book for all skill levels. Novices will receive an introduction to the features of shells and power users will get to explore the benefits of zsh--one of the most powerful, versatile shells ever written. Intermediate users will uncover hints, recipes, and ideas to enhance their skill sets. The book covers shell programming, but is unique in its thorough coverage of using shells interactively--a powerful and time-saving alternative to windows and a mouse. This strong author team has written an immediately useful book, packed with examples and suggestions that users of Unix, Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows can readily apply.
- Ernest J. This is a totally neat idea for a book... the command line gets addictive quickly.
- Bill Ryan, Bill's House O Insomnia This comprehensive, hands-on guide focuses on two of the most popular and feature-rich shells, bash and zsh. From Bash to Z Conquering the Command Line is a book for all skill levels. Novices will receive an introduction to the features of shells and power users will get to explore the benefits of zsh--one of the most powerful, versatile shells ever written. Intermediate users will uncover hints, recipes, and ideas to enhance their skill sets. The book covers shell programming, but is unique in its thorough coverage of using shells interactively--a powerful and time-saving alternative to windows and a mouse. This strong author team has written an immediately useful book, packed with examples and suggestions that users of Unix, Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows can readily apply.
472 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 30, 2020
A.K.A. "zsh: the missing manual".
This book suffers from a single problem: it talks too much about shells that are not zsh. It tries to cover bash fairly well and has some exposition on csh, tcsh, ksh, which you're highly unlikely to be interested in, because the only reason you would get this book is Zsh.
That being said, it's a great book about Zsh. It incrementally introduces all the relevant features, without turning itself into a reference manual. I've been using Zsh for more than 10 years, and I definitely picked a lot of things from it (to name a few quick ones: SHORT_LOOPS, psvar + precmd, print -L).
The biggest value in this book for me is that it finally got me to start understanding the completion system, which is pretty complicated. I did end up writing a few completing functions and am now able to semi-debug other ones that don't quite do it for me.
The book is fairly old (2005), but as you can imagine, that's totally not a problem. New things have been added to Zsh, but it hasn't been majorly revamped or anything, so all the stuff there is pretty relevant. Obviously, it's not talking about oh-my-zsh or any of the 20+ plugin managers/configuration managers available today, nor it will give you any good ideas on how to do your dotfiles.
If you're looking for a way to casually configure your oh-my-zsh setup to be better, this book is probably not for you. But if you're a Zsh power user that ends up writing a fair amount of shell code, you can learn a lot.
This book suffers from a single problem: it talks too much about shells that are not zsh. It tries to cover bash fairly well and has some exposition on csh, tcsh, ksh, which you're highly unlikely to be interested in, because the only reason you would get this book is Zsh.
That being said, it's a great book about Zsh. It incrementally introduces all the relevant features, without turning itself into a reference manual. I've been using Zsh for more than 10 years, and I definitely picked a lot of things from it (to name a few quick ones: SHORT_LOOPS, psvar + precmd, print -L).
The biggest value in this book for me is that it finally got me to start understanding the completion system, which is pretty complicated. I did end up writing a few completing functions and am now able to semi-debug other ones that don't quite do it for me.
The book is fairly old (2005), but as you can imagine, that's totally not a problem. New things have been added to Zsh, but it hasn't been majorly revamped or anything, so all the stuff there is pretty relevant. Obviously, it's not talking about oh-my-zsh or any of the 20+ plugin managers/configuration managers available today, nor it will give you any good ideas on how to do your dotfiles.
If you're looking for a way to casually configure your oh-my-zsh setup to be better, this book is probably not for you. But if you're a Zsh power user that ends up writing a fair amount of shell code, you can learn a lot.
November 16, 2017
It’s refreshing to read a book that old and learn so much. Nice to see that the fundamentals of what we work with are solid and stand the test of time. I would like to recommend (and use!) this book as a reference book, but alas, like every Apress book I’ve touched, the index is horribly useless. So use post-its while reading and then keep it near your desk.
December 6, 2012
Not sure what to think about this book - on one hand it's packed with useful information and tips (chapters on globbing and basics of shell programming). On the other hand it feels more like a technical manual, a bit too dry and it's really daunting read. And yes - I realize it is a technical book, but it wouldn't have to be that way - "21st Century C" manages to be informative and entertaining at the same time while covering some of the similar topics (although in less detail).
In the end I started using post-it notes to mark the things I found interesting/useful/worth remembering while skimming the book and only reading some of the 'in-depth' chapters.
It's a really good overview of both Bash and ZSH and I recommend it to people who use terminal-based environments every day - there's a lot to be learned from it.
In the end I started using post-it notes to mark the things I found interesting/useful/worth remembering while skimming the book and only reading some of the 'in-depth' chapters.
It's a really good overview of both Bash and ZSH and I recommend it to people who use terminal-based environments every day - there's a lot to be learned from it.
December 10, 2012
Lots of zsh info, would likely give it a higher rating if I were using that shell instead of bash, but a number of gems in there none the less.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews