Chapter 10. Custom Tools

Although many tools are available to aid in the tasks of network administration, there will often be some task for which you need a tool that does not yet exist. In this situation, you can either find a way to live without the tool, pay someone to make it for you, or create the tool yourself.

Most of the tools described in this book are relatively complicated and take a large effort to create. They require a mastery of the language the tool is written in, the ability to design and implement a large project, and experience with network programming. However, you can write a great number of simple tools using languages that were designed for just such a purpose. This chapter presents a brief introduction to two such scripting languages: the Bourne shell and Perl. Both of these languages are in very wide use. The Bourne shell in particular is present on every standard Unix system, and the Perl language is now installed on most modern systems.

In this chapter you will be expected to already have familiarity with programming in some language; most any of the commonly used languages will serve as a sufficient background for you to quickly pick up the basics of Perl and the Bourne shell.