and only files matching my_test_here would make it onto do_something. I love the while-read pattern, but it just doesn't feel right that there's no simpler, built-in, idiomatic way to write a function ...

Here are some basic skills to get started with bash, one of the best shells for preparing and using scripts on Linux. Scripting in Linux–putting commands into a file so you can run them as a group—is ...

Using a function in bash allows you to create something in Linux that works as if it were a script within a script. Whenever the data being processed matches a set of conditions, your script can call ...

Elevate your Bash skills with three must-know patterns for robust error handling.

I've recently written about using bash arrays and bash regular expressions, so here's a more useful example of using them to test IP addresses for validity. To belabor the obvious: IP addresses are 32 ...

The first software that I was actually paid to develop was a 2-page shell script that prompted the user for a dozen or so pieces of information, before launching a set of cooperating processes. Those ...

It is easy to dismiss bash — the typical Linux shell program — as just a command prompt that allows scripting. Bash, however, is a full-blown programming language. I wouldn’t presume to tell you that ...

You run the Bash script from Terminal using the syntax shown on the top line of Figure 3 (./crf.sh). As you see in the figure, however, if you try to run the script ...

Many bash scripts start out as something quick and dirty but then become so useful that they live for years, indeed sometimes seeing more use than our traditional programs. Now that you can even run ...

FFmpeg was designed as a cross-platform solution for video and audio recording, conversion, and streaming. Its About page describes the command-line tool as “the leading multimedia framework, able to ...