Ville Vainio wrote: > If you don't need to edit already existing system scripts, you don't > really need to know bash scripting. For debugging purposes, it's easy > to see what commands the script executes to perform a task. > > You just need to know about `backticks` and $ENV_VARS, but that's more > general Unix knowledge than actual shell scripting. > > So IMHO learning bash scripting might be a waste of time, and it > should be learnt 'as you go' - i.e. if/when you eventually bump into a > problem where you need to be able to do bash scripting. There's the > 'Unix romantic' movement that still thinks shell scripts are a good > idea, but this is my .02EUR to point out that not everyone agrees with > them.
The simplest script is just a set of commands one could run from the command line. One step above is learning how to pass arguments (for cmd.exe in Windows, they are just %1, %2, etc.) and set variables. I think every computer user, not just system administrators, show know this much about the shell language of his OS, regardless of whether it's Windows, Unix, or something else. On Windows I often see people "mousing around" instead of getting things done faster from the command line. I actually like the Windows cmd language (it's an acquired taste), but I have read it is going away in Windows Longhorn (WH). That's an argument for writing more complicated scripts in Python. WH is supposed to get a much better shell, called Monad, inspired by the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz :). Between a low-level shell scripting language and a higher-level language like Python, and intermediate level language such as Rexx could be considered. Many IBM people swear by it. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
