Bash is a shell and command language. It is distributed widely as the default login shell for most Linux distributions. We’ve rounded up some of the most popular Bash-related articles for your weekend reading.<\/p>\n
Writing More Compact Bash Code<\/a><\/p>\n By Mitch Frazier<\/p>\n In most programming languages, non-scripting ones at least, you want to avoid uninitialized variables. In bash, using uninitialized variables can often simplify your code.<\/p>\n Normalizing Filenames and Data with Bash<\/a><\/p>\n By Dave Taylor<\/p>\n URLify: convert letter sequences into safe URLs with hex equivalents.<\/p>\n Roman Numerals and Bash<\/a><\/p>\n By Dave Taylor<\/p>\n Fun with retro-coding a Roman numeral converter\u2014Dave heads back to his college years and solves homework anew!<\/p>\n Also read Dave’s followup article, More Roman Numerals and Bash<\/a>.<\/p>\n Create Dynamic Wallpaper with a Bash Script<\/a><\/p>\n By Patrick Wheelan<\/p>\n Harness the power of bash and learn how to scrape websites for exciting new images every morning.<\/p>\n Developing Console Applications with Bash<\/a><\/p>\n By Andy Carlson<\/p>\n Bring the power of the Linux command line into your application development process.<\/p>\n Parsing an RSS News Feed with a Bash Script<\/a><\/p>\n By Jim Hall<\/p>\n I can automate an hourly job to retrieve a copy of an RSS feed, parse it, and save the news items to a local file that the website can incorporate. That reduces complexity on the website, with only a little extra work by parsing the RSS news feed with a Bash script.<\/p>\n Hacking a Safe with Bash<\/a><\/p>\n By Adam Kosmin<\/p>\n Being a minimalist, I have little interest in dealing with GUI applications that slow down my work flow or application-specific solutions (such as browser password vaults) that are applicable only toward a subset of my sensitive data. Working with text files affords greater flexibility over how my data is structured and provides the ability to leverage standard tools I can expect to find most anywhere.<\/p>\n Graph Any Data with Cacti!<\/a><\/p>\n By Shawn Powers<\/p>\n Cacti is not a new program. It’s been around for a long time, and in its own way, it’s a complicated beast itself. I finally really took the time to figure it out, however, and I realized that it’s not too difficult to use. The cool part is that Cacti makes RRDtool manipulation incredibly convenient. It did take me the better part of a day to understand Cacti fully, so hopefully this article will save you some time.<\/p>\n Reading Web Comics via Bash Script<\/a><\/p>\n By Jim Hall<\/p>\n I follow several Web comics. I used to open my Web browser and check out each comic’s Web site. That method was fine when I read only a few Web comics, but it became a pain to stay current when I followed more than about ten comics. These days, I read around 20 Web comics. It takes a lot of time to open each Web site separately just to read a Web comic. I could bookmark the Web comics, but I figured there had to be a better way\u2014a simpler way for me to read all of my Web comics at once.<\/p>\n My Favorite bash Tips and Tricks<\/a><\/p>\n By Prentice Bisbal<\/p>\n Save a lot of typing with these handy bash features you won’t find in an old-fashioned UNIX shell.<\/p>\n Note: This article was originally published March 2018 and updated with additional and more current articles January 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n