Check if a file is really a file, whether a string contains anything, and whether you can run a program with these vital patterns.

Bash scripts are powerful, but with power comes great responsibility. It’s very easy for sloppy or poorly-planned code to do real damage, so it’s a good idea to be careful and practice defensive ...

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 ...

In order to avoid this common mistake I often have my shell scripts prompt me for a yes or no answer before they proceed. The function described here is for doing that: asking a question and ...

I've recently written about using bash arrays and bash regular expressions, so here's a more useful example of using them to test IP addresses for validity. To belabor the obvious: IP addresses are 32 ...

Have you ever dreamed of making a bash script that assembles Intel 8080 machine code? [Chris Smith] did exactly that when he created xa.sh, a cross-assembler written entirely in Bourne shell script.

You need to package up a bunch of files, send them somewhere, and do something with them at the destination. It isn’t an uncommon scenario. The obvious answer is to create an archive — a zip or tar ...