Conference turris::digital_unix

> Can anyone suggest a good UNIX script writing primer?

	Which UNIX scripting language(s) are you interested in?

	C-shell, Korn-shell, Bourne-shell, Tcl, Pearl, awk, .....

    Well, for supportability reasons, I'd rather not go with tcl or perl. 
    I'd rather stay within one of the standard shells (csh, ksh, sh).  What
    I now need is to be able to create a for or while loop, and do file
    I/O.  Is any one better than the other?
    
    Thanks!
    tl

    For scripting, you can eliminate csh if you're smart (see
    http://www.see.mro.dec.com/csh_programming_considered_harmful.txt ).
    For the Bourne-based shells, you may as well learn ksh or the POSIX
    shell (they're similar, and Bourne shell is a subset of each). The
    O'Reilly book _Learning the Korn Shell_ is pretty good.
    
    However, I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss Perl. It may not
    necessarily come bundled with every OS, but it's available for most,
    it's free, and it's a lot more "standard" as a CGI scripting language
    than the others - partly because it leaves fewer security holes than raw
    shell languages. I'm not sure what to recommend as a text, other than
    to point you at O'Reilly again, but the reference manual is on-line at
    http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/perl-man . For a quick intro, see
    http://www.iftech.com/oltc/webdev/webdev_perl.stm , and for a more
    comprehensive list of on-line Perl resources, see
    http://webreference.com/programming/perl.html .
        
    -Tom

   Nor would I dismiss tcl. Tcl/Tk are supposed to be part of all
   V4.0 Digital Unix systems. But I am notoriously biased when it comes
   to tcl/tk.

   -- John Faricelli

    I just got "UNIX Shells by Example", by Ellie Quigley (Prentice Hall),
    and I'm happy with it. It covers the Korn, Bourne, and C shells.

    - tom
    

	"Unix Shell Programming" by Lowell Jay Arthur & Ted Burns is a very
	good intro to shell programming(bourne, korn, and csh).

	Paul

I used this book in a shell programming class and it's a pretty good
introductory text. It covers mostly the Bourne shell, but also covers the Korn
shell a little. The book is copyright 1985, so I'd only get it if there were a
newer edition available.

I read/heard long ago that the Bourne shell was the preferred programming
language, so I've used it right from the start. I use the other shells described
in the earler notes if I need a specific feature.

fwiw, I have this book on my desk, though, and refer to it often.

-Jeff

re .0: Personally, I always found the man pages more than adequate, but maybe
that says more about me than about the man pages :-)

re .4:
$ man tcl
No reference page found for tcl.
$ tcl
tcl>

Yup, so I have tcl on my UNIX V4.0 system, but no help on using it.  Is there a
man page, and if so where?

Ta,
Scott

    Well, using the help command at the tcl> prompt can get
    you some more information. Not sure how useful it is.
    
    E.g.,
    
    tcl>help tcl/signals/signal
           signal action siglist ?command?
                  Specify  the  action  to take when a Unix signal is
                  received by Extended Tcl, or a program that  embeds
                  it.   Siglist  is  a list of either the symbolic or
                  numeric Unix signal (the SIG prefix  is  optional).
                  Action  is  one of the following actions to be per-
                  formed on receipt of the signal.   To  specify  all
                  modifiable  signals, use `*' (this will not include
                  SIGKILL and SIGSTOP, as they can not be  modified).
    
                  default - Perform system default action when signal
                  is received (see signal system call documentation).
    
                  ignore - Ignore the signal.
    
                  error - Generate a catchable Tcl error.  It will be
                  as if the command  that  was  running  returned  an
                  error.  The error code will be in the form:
                      POSIX SIG signame
                  For  the death of child signal, signame will always
                  be SIGCHLD, rather than SIGCLD,  to  allow  writing
                  portable code.
    
    

   RE: man pages. Pull the approriate tcl/tk kit for the version
   supplied on Digital Unix from the Internet (I believe it's
   tcl7.3/tk4.0, but I don't have V4 installed anywhere I can look).
   It has a complete set of man pages.

   Or I can email them to you ;-)

   -- John Faricelli

    Start with the FAQ at
    http://www.NeoSoft.com/tcl/ftparchive/FAQ/part1.html
    
    4 powerpoint overviews are in ftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl/tut.tar.Z
    
    /joel
    

We do ship tclhelp in v4.0 (/usr/ucb/tclhelp) which is a Tk interface
to man-page like tcl, extended Tcl, tk stuff. Not much use from a cct
but fine for devlopement in front of a workstation. 

			pete

   Since I don't have access to a 4.0 system I have to guess at these
   things, but for tclhelp to display the help files for tcl/tk/etc.
   one would assume that the nroff source is on the system somewhere.
   If you have those, then you are golden. Just give the "man"
   the alternate directory to use.

   -- John

Nope. I just checked. The files are in /usr/lib/tcl/tclX/help/. They are just
already-formatted man pages (i.e. text files)  that tclhelp displays in a text
widget. 

			Pete