Summary

In this chapter, you learned to harness the power of the Linux shell to create your own powerful, functional commands in just a few minutes using shell scripting. Specific topics you learned about in this chapter include

• Creating, assigning values to, and substituting variables

• Using the different types of quoting for variable and command substitution

• Using the PATH environment variable as it applies to commands and shell scripts

• Assigning execute permissions to your script and moving it to a directory listed in PATH so that it can be easily called

• Using the if..then conditional statement structure

• Using the while..do conditional statement structure

• Using the for..do conditional statement structure

After you've spent some time practicing the techniques you learned in this chapter, you will be able to use techniques such as command substitution and filename expansion, along with the wide variety of shell commands you learned earlier to employ the shell efficiently.

Although use of the console and the shell prompt might seem like a blur to you after these few short chapters, as you refer back to them while using Linux, you'll gradually become more familiar with the command-line personality of Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. In time, you'll come to feel at home on the command line to the same extent that you do at a graphical desktop.