How to Find Out More

The shell is a very complex and powerful tool, and has many features that couldn’t be covered in a single chapter. This article compares the various shells and includes a very detailed chart of the differences between the most popular shells. It also has some good advice on choosing which shell to use.

• NSCP Unix Shells: http://www.int.gu.edu.au/courses/2010int/nscp_shells.html

This is the UNIX FAQ. It goes into great detail in answering some common but tricky questions, such as how the configuration files for the various shells work, or how to get the C shell to display the working directory in the prompt.

• UNIX FAQ/faq Index: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/

• UNIX FAQ/shell Index: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/

Most introductory books on the UNIX operating system have a chapter on the shell. This book is a particularly good beginner’s introduction to Linux. It is not exclusively devoted to the shell, but if you’re looking for a great general reference, this is worth picking up.

• Sobell, Mark G. A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming. 1st ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005.

• These two books are excellent guides to bash and ksh.

• Newham, Cameron and Bill Rosenblatt. Learning the bash Shell. 3rd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2005.

• Bolsky, Morris I. and David G.Korn. The New Korn Shell, Command and Programming Language. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice Hall, 1995.

• One of the relatively few books devoted to the C shells. This reference does not cover shell scripting, only the interactive features of the shells.

• DuBois, Paul. Using csh & tcsh. 1st ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 1995.

• These two sources both go beyond the material in this chapter, with an emphasis on shell scripting.

• Johnson, Chris F.A. Shell Scripting Recipes. 1st ed. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2005.

• Robbins, Arnold and Nelson H.F.Beebe. Classic Shell Scripting. 1st ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2005.