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View all our book reviews. Or, view our Software, hardware, and game reviews.
by Dave Johnson Reviewed January 2005
"One of the most important changes in the world of Unix and Unix-like operating systems was the release of the completely rewritten Apple Mac OS X system." -- Opening of chapter 11 of Wicked Cool Shell Scripts. If you are ready to explore the UNIX underpinnings of OS X, this is the second book you will want. Before you jump in to this book you will need to already be comfortable with the terminal window or have a good basic book on UNIX. If you don’t, this book will likely frustrate you, as the book's target audience is not the beginner terminal user. This book assumes you have some basic background in shell scripting. For example; it does not explain about the $PATH variable and how to set or change it, which can be frustrating for someone just learning shell scripting. Indeed, you need to already have a good grasp of what shell scripting is! The UNIX shell is much more than a simple command line interpreter. You can put a few lines of commands into a file, make that file executable, and you have a "new command" Windows/DOS .BAT files are a primitive example of what can be done with a shell script. Combine this with the many standard programs available in any UNIX environment, and you have a powerful method for creating tools to make your computer life easier. This book starts with some simple scripts; ones that most Macintosh users might ask "why bother?", as many of these tasks are trivial, given a GUI interface. But stick with it and as he builds on these scripts you will see the power of shell scripting. He presents a problem, a script to solve it, and then a detailed explanation of what the script does and how. The scripts in the first four chapters are tools that make a basic comment line interface more useful and productive. Then come the chapters on System Administration and maintenance. I’m not sure even a System Administrator, in a pure Macintosh environment, would even use these, given the supplied GUI tools to handle these tasks. The scripts really get interesting in Chapter 7, Web and Internet. There are several scripts for gathering Web information, similar to the way Sherlock does it, but you can customize it to fit your exact needs. The next few chapters dive into web server administration with tools for maintaining a web site. There is a chapter on Macintosh OS X scripts. Many of the examples are more easily done in the Macintosh GUI, but it lets you see how the other world lives. The last chapter is on fun and games. While not terribly exciting, the games do nicely demonstrate the power of shell scripting. If you want to see what is under the hood of OS X, this book can help. Think of it as a shell scripting cookbook; a place to go for basic recipes beyond how to boil water. Check http://www.intutive.com/wicked/ for updates, bonus scripts and additional Mac scripts.
View all our book reviews. Or, view our Software, hardware, and game reviews. [ home | newsletter | past | join | listserve | shareware | directory | links | md9 ] © 2004 by Dave Johnson & MLMUG |
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