Professional Shell Script, by Aurélio Marinho Jargas

Fresh from the oven, the Professional Shell Script book, by Aurélio Marinho Jargas. Those who follow his work know: besides technical quality, the light, direct and humorous didactics catch attention. Learning shell with this material tends to be a pleasant experience, one of those that makes you want to open the terminal and test right away.

If you want to get a taste first, the publisher has made two files available: the table of contents and a sample chapter. Worth taking a look to feel the text tone and content organization.

The book covers from basic to advanced with natural progression. It starts with fundamental concepts, goes through control structures and goes deep into file and text manipulation. Regular expressions appear in the right context, with examples that solve real problems. There’s space for debugging, optimization and best practices, always with that care to explain the why of things and not just “how to do it”.

Besides this title, Aurélio is author of Regular Expressions, also by Novatec, which reinforces his experience in essential tools for those who administer systems and program daily.

Why learn shell script? Because automating tasks saves time, reduces errors and gives predictability. Administrators simplify routines, developers gain agility in deploys and integrations, Linux users customize the environment and DevOps professionals connect everything in more reliable pipelines.

I recommend it for those starting from scratch, for those who already have some practice and want to take a step further, and for those looking for a reference to keep at hand at work. It’s reading that teaches without complicating and invites practice.