Acknowledgments for the First Edition

This project has been an interesting experience and wouldn't have been possible without the help of a number of people. Firstly, I'd like to thank Brian Fox and Chet Ramey for creating bash and making it the polished product it is today. Thanks also to Chet Ramey for promptly answering all of my questions on bash and pointing out my errors.

Many thanks to Bill Rosenblatt for Learning the korn Shell , on which this book is based; Michael O'Reilly and Michael Malone at iiNet Technologies for their useful comments and suggestions (and my net.connection!); Chris Thorne, Justin Twiss, David Quin-Conroy, and my mum for their comments, suggestions, and corrections; Linus Torvalds for the Linux operating system which introduced me to bash and was the platform for all of my work on the book; Brian Fox for providing a short history of bash ; David Korn for information on the latest Korn shell. Thanks also to Depeche Mode for "101" as a backdrop while I worked, Laurence Durbridge for being a likable pest and never failing to ask "Finished the book yet?" and Adam (for being in my book).

The sharp eyes of our technical reviewers picked up many mistakes. Thanks to Matt Healy, Chet Ramey, Bill Reynolds, Bill Rosenblatt, and Norm Walsh for taking time out to go through the manuscript.

The crew at O'Reilly & Associates were indispensable in getting this book out the door. I'd like to thank Lenny Muellner for providing me with the formatting tools for the job, Chris Reilley for the figures, and Edie Freedman for the cover design. On the production end, I'd like to thank David Sewell for his copyediting, Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary for managing the production process, Michael Deutsch and Jane Ellin for their production assistance, Ellen Siever for tools support, Kismet McDonough for providing quality assurance, and Seth Maislin for the index.

I'm grateful to Frank Willison for taking me up on my first piece of email to ORA: "What about a book on bash ?"

Last but by no means least, a big thank you to my editor, Mike Loukides, who helped steer me through this project.