Advanced Korn Shell Programming Duration: 3 days Audience Course Contents Course Objectives Instructional Technique Prerequisites

Advanced Korn Shell Programming

Duration: 3 days

Audience

Individuals requiring a mastery of the command line interface to the UNIX operating system. This includes system administrators, programmers, and power users. This course is a follow-on to the Korn Shell Programming introductory course.

Course Contents

1. Review of Useful Shell Commands

2. Interactive Uses of the Shell
   1. Advanced I/O Redirection

   2. Command Line Parsing and Order of Evaluation

   3. Command Line Editing and Command History

   4. Using the Alias and Function Facilities

3. Programming Topics
   1. Command and Variable Substitution

   2. Using eval, Autoload Functions, and the Dot Command

   3. Arrays, Arithmetic Variables, and Compound Variables

   4. Testing Files and Strings

   5. Co-Processes and Here-Documents

   6. Creating and Using Shell Scripts

   7. Program Flow Control

   8. Debugging Programs

   9. Using the trap Command (signal handling)

   10. Invocation and Environment

   11. Performance Evaluation and Tuning

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to write and debug advanced Korn Shell scripts using the following features and more:

• Opening files for read, write, and read/write, from within the shell,

• Using all 20 forms of parameter expansion for precise control of expressions,

• Using associative arrays to increase performance in lookup-intensive scripts,

• Using formatted variables to produce specific output layouts,

• Create co-processes as a rudimentary form of parallel processing.

Instructional Technique

Students are invited to bring their current ideas and questions to the classroom for discussion. Case studies, lecture, group problem solving, and online laboratories will be used. Students will be encouraged to enhance their skills utilizing the techniques presented through classroom problem solving and controlled online workshops.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with UNIX commands, directory structure, and the text editor. There is no review of basic features of the shell as covered in the Korn Shell Programming introductory course, so students should be moderately well-versed in simple shell scripting.

Programming skills should be fairly well-developed before taking this course.