Topics Covered

The topic of shell programming doesn't lend itself as neatly to a command-by-command reference as other subjects covered in this book. (There are a whole lot of little commands, most of which have few or no arguments.) Consequently, I'm going to break with the traditions of this book a little bit and arrange this chapter by subtopic.

The notation used in this chapter may be a wee bit confusing. Here are some examples that hopefully might clear things up:

Notation	Means
<Tab>	Press the Tab key on the keyboard. Do not try to type the letter sequence T-a-b.
<Ctrl>-P	Press the Ctrl key and the P key at the same time.
<Meta>-r	Press the meta key (on my keyboard it's the <Esc> key; yours may be different) and the r key at the same time.

The subtopics covered in this chapter include the following:

`Invoking bash`	Command line options for bash.
`Startup Files`	Conditions under which startup or shutdown files are sourced.
`Aliases`	Set and unset command line aliases.
`Command History`	Access and manipulate command history.
`Command Completion`	How to exploit command completion features.
`Command Line Editing`	How to manipulate the current command line.
`Word Designators`	How to specify individual words on a command line.
`Shell Variables`	Listing of shell variables.
`Shell Prompt`	How to customize your shell prompt.
`Shell Arithmetic`	Shell arithmetic operators.
`Looping Statements`	Shell looping statements.
`Conditional Statements`	Syntax and examples.
`Shell Functions`	Syntax and examples.
`Builtins`	Built-in bash commands.