Great Bash will teach you the fundamentals of bash shell programming, beginning with simple shell scripts and progressing to complex, automated system administration and file management tasks. You'll also get a firm handle on control structures and the decision-making abilities of the bash environment. By the time you're done, you'll have written more than twenty complex shell scripts, and interacted with the rest of your file system.

Throughout the course, you'll learn how to think like a shell programmer. Without compilation or in many cases, strict security constraints, shell programmers have an immense amount of power at their fingertips. You'll build in error checking and learn when to ask for input, and when to take control and just do something. Throughout it all, you'll get a handle on best practices, as you learn from Carl Albing, a seasoned scripting pro.