Introduction

If you are a developer, then you know the value of time. Optimizing your work process is one of the most important aspects of the job.

In that path towards efficiency and productivity, we are often posed with actions that must be repeated over and over again, like:

• taking a screenshot and uploading it to a server
• processing text that may come in many shapes and forms
• converting files between different formats
• parsing a program's output

Enter Bash, our savior.

Bash is a Unix shell written by Brian Fox for the GNU Project as a free software replacement for the Bourne shell. It was released in 1989 and has been distributed as the Linux and macOS default shell for a long time.

So why do we need to learn something that was written more than 30 years ago? The answer is simple: this something is today one of the most powerful and portable tools for writing efficient scripts for all Unix-based systems. And that's why you should learn bash. Period.

In this handbook, I'm going to describe the most important concepts in bash with examples. I hope this compendium will be helpful to you.