[ILUG] Bash me up

[Niall O Broin]

On 15 Jul 2005, at 21:13, Karl Carlile wrote:

> I have been seriously applying myself to BASH and an still not certain 
> what
> the benefits in mastering it are.

bash is a Linux command shell, the default and probably the most widely 
used one. The benefits of mastering are that it makes your work with it 
more efficient, and you'll be able to write short bash scripts to 
automate sequences of steps.

> There is emacs which seems to have a somewhat different lingo to BASH.

emacs is an editor. It has commands which are used to tell it to do 
things, such as delete a line, save a file etc. It's a completely 
different animal to bash.

> The same for EMACS ELISP.

Emacs lisp is the lisp extension language. A LOT of emacs' 
functionality comes from programs written in elisp which glue together 
low level editor functions.

> Why the different languages. Seems to be some overlap. What are the 
> different functions they
> each serve.

That's a very long question. They were written at different times to 
solve different problems, and have different ways of doing things. Some 
of the differences are down to personal taste.

> Finally are there no online texts that pose problems for BASH students 
> so that
> they can use their knowledge and skill to solve them using BASH.

Google is your friend too. I've never come across such a thing but 
then, I've never looked.

You've been asking quite a few questions here lately Karl, and clearly 
you're anxious to learn. That's good. Might I suggest that you read a 
couple of introductory books end to end? There may be lots of things 
there which mean nothing now, but as you use Linux more, you will 
remember seeing things in those books and you'll hopefully have some 
lightbulb moments.



Niall