OPS235 Scripting Exercises

Things you need to know

Terminal vs script file

A shell script is nothing more than a sequence of shell commands. Any command you put in a shell script can be executed just as well in a terminal. In fact no matter how complex your script is - you can run the entire thing from a terminal window without executing the script.

Runnning a command

• How to run a command in the current directory or another directory or a directory in the $PATH
• That programs you run need to have execute permission
• What your $PWD is, pwd command
• Check the return code from a command by examining $?

Variables

• How to create a variable and set a value in it
• How to get the value from a variable

Quotes

• Why use single or double quotes
• The difference between single and double quotes
• Backquotes

Redirecting output

• How to redirect output from a command to a file
• How to pipe output from one command to another command