Here are some basic skills to get started with bash, one of the best shells for preparing and using scripts on Linux. Scripting in Linux–putting commands into a file so you can run them as a group—is ...

I am involved in several free software projects, including one or two where I maintain the website. For one of those projects, we currently are updating the website. Ours is probably similar to other ...

The first software that I was actually paid to develop was a 2-page shell script that prompted the user for a dozen or so pieces of information, before launching a set of cooperating processes. Those ...

Here are some of the more popular bash options to control how scripts work on Linux and how to list the available options, including seeing which ones are turned on. Bash provides a large number of ...

You normally think of a critical section — that is, a piece of a program that excludes other programs from using a resource — as a pretty advanced technique. You certainly don’t often think of them as ...

A recent post about debugging constructs surprised me. There were quite a few comments about how you didn’t need a debugger, as long as you had printf. For that matter, we’ve all debugged systems ...