Resources to learn sh scripting 'just like a normal programming language'

Question

Hi,

what is the best resource (book would be nice) to learn sh scripting (the "standard" shell on Unix systems) just like when i would learn a "normal" programming/scripting language ?

There are lots of tutorials on certain aspects of shell scripting, they mostly deal with shells in general and unix commands and so on, but i would rather like to find a more general approach - meaning a quick syntactic overview and an outlook on how to do things you normally do when programming, like implementing small algorithms and so on. Doing actual scripting, not just a structured batch file. And rather 100-liners than 1-to-3-liners.

Can you recommend a good standard book on the topic ?

Answer 1

Although the style these days is enormous books, I still like Steve Bourne's Introduction to the Unix Shell. This was the original document that thousands of programmers learned from before Linus Torvalds did his hacking or Tim O'Reilly founded his publishing house.

Answer 2

The Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/upe/) is a great introduction to shell scripting as well as its larger context.

Ari.