Sat Aug 15 15:42:53 PDT 2015
Classic Shell Scripting by Arnold Robbins and Nelson H.F. Beebe
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A book focused on Bourne shell scripting. This has some real world examples - but unfortunately it generally fails to be thoroughly interesting or as absorbing as it promises to be. The major failings are the length of the book - it is just too long to be assimilatable, its academic examples, and its lack of structure. It is not completely clear as you read through who the intended audience or audiences are. It is not clear where one might apply the examples that given.
The classical books on software technologies generate stopping off points where the reader is forced to consider immediately implementing what is described in his or her day to day work, either as a tool or an enhancement to process or design. This book did not generate these stopping off points for me. Instead I was occasionally fretting that there might be another way to do what had just been described. This does not happen when one reads Bentley, Kernighan, Wall et al.
So I give it just 2/5. I would only buy it if you are interested in surveying all the works on scripting, it is required reading for a course, or if for some reason the example chapter available online particularly appeals to you.