Anyone who works with BSD and other Unix- and Linux-like systems will sooner or later have to deal with the shell and shell scripts, e.g. automation of repetitive task or starting services in /etc/rc.d. Understanding scripts and how to meaningfully extend or rewrite them is the goal of this tutorial, which is mainly designed for beginners and sysadmins.
Simple shell scripts often consist of a sequence of arbitrary shell commands executed in a specific order to achieve a particular purpose. This is where the tutorial will begin, and I will then walk participants through the other components of a script using examples:
Variables
Sourcing
Control structures
Loops
In- and output redirection
Parameters and options
Functions
Testing scripts
From the tutorial the participants will get an impression of what could be achieved with the well-equipped toolbox the shell provides and use that knowledge for creating own scripts for their projects.
Participants should bring their own machines to try out the examples. I encourage everybody to ask questions and bring examples or problems from their daily work to the tutorial to foster a vivid discussion.
I've been writing shell scripts as part of my work since I got in contact with Unix in 1993 and have been teaching shell programming to apprentices for over ten years. This tutorial will be a shortened and in regards to rc-scripts extended version of that one-week course.