Development of competencies in shell scripts will require basic knowledge in the following particular fields:
There would be need to introduce shell scripting in UNIX like systems as well as in batch programming in windows or DOS though for this particular case the Linux will be our center of focus
Introduction to the Linux program, which would define Linux, its development, installation, application, as well as elaborate shell use and more particularly shell script’s relevance.
The next level would be informative on how to set up shell programming. This topic would center more on how to write shell scripts, look into shell variables, shell arithmetic, quotes, exit status as well as the read statements. Learners would be informed on how to use more commands on one command line, command line processing, pipes, filter, processes as well as Linux commands.
The next topic would concentrate on shell (bash) structured language construction. Decision making in shell script will take center stage where the if command and test commands would be addressed, this would include nested ifs multilevel if-then-else, loops in shell scripts as well as how to de-bug the shell scripts (Olkzac 1991 p. 68).
Advanced Shell Scripting Commands would involve sending unwanted output of program dev/null, learning about shell variables, conditional execution, I/O execution, user interface and dialogue utility, message box, confirmation Box, input using dialogue utility, how to install trap commands shift commands as well as getopts commands.
Essential utilities for power user is a topic that would prepare users through Quick Tour preparation of essential utilities, the ability to use cut utility in selecting portions of a file, joining lines through the use of tr utility, data manipulation using awk utility, sed utility, doing away with duplicate lines from the text database file using unique utility and last but no least finding matching patters through the use of grep utility.
Users will have to be taken through learning expressions with ex where one is introduced to ex, printing text on-screen, coping lines, deleting lines, word searching, regular expression substitution, word finding as well as lowercase character to uppercase conversion.
Awk will be an one of the essential competencies in shell script development that will take one through how to get started with awk, doing arithmetic with awk, going through user defined variables, print statements use, if condition and loops in awk, practicle awk examples as well as how one can write sed scripts
Shell script examples will also be highlighted on its application in logic development, command line handling, loops using while as well as for loop, shell scripting arithmetic, file handling, screen handling, implementation of the background process, functions in shell script together with user interface. System administration and the integration of awk script with shell script will wind this section (Pickover 1990 p. 90).