An introduction to Unix shell scripting.

One of the classes that I took during my post bach studies was entitled An introduction to Unix programming. Now I had worked with Unix briefly during my undergrad studies, but never really considered it as a programming language. It's an operating system right? However during the taking of the class I came to an epiphany. That epiphany being that one of the truly beautiful things about Unix is that it's a little of both. Since all the guys that developed the operating system were programmers first and foremost they built an operating system so rich in tools that the operating system itself was essentially a programmers operating system. This might explain why so many non programmers have so many frustrations with Unix, and why so many geeks find themselves right at home in it. The gentleman who taught the class was an extremely experienced C and C++ programmer and he made a statement about Unix that has stuck with me to this very day. He said "The thing I like about Unix is that everyday you work with it you find some tiny little jewel hidden in there". As I have been programming in Unix for these last 14 years I can confirm that he was exactly right. There is not a day that passes that I do not find some cool little thing that I ddn't know about, or some nifty little tool.

However, all that being said, Unix can be confusing and it's tools are all too often arcane and difficult to understand. My objective then in starting this blog was two fold. Firstly, I would like to help folks to overcome some of the many pitfalls and gotcha's that have cost me time and anguish over the years. Second, my hope is to create a reservoir for all the little code pieces so that myself and hopefully others can pull from for future efforts.