Re: OT: what scripting language to learn?
On 12/04/2008, Bob McGowan <bob_mcgowan@symantec.com> wrote:
Damon L. Chesser wrote:
I keep coming up against a wall "Solid scripting experience required" in my job search (for Linux sys admin). IYHO, what would be the one scripting language to learn?
Several other responses suggest "sh", with "awk" and "sed", etc.
I second those suggestions, but have one thing to add: learn regex syntax, and learn it well. They can be "mind benders", but if you don't know how to use them, your use of UNIX/Linux command line utilities will suffer.
--
Bob McGowan
Hey,
Agreed! sh, grep, awk, sed, regex, perl and/or python.
To help with the non-bash shell scripting you'll probably want to install something like pdksh which closely mirrors the ksh found on solaris/aix/hpux systems.
Another thing to learn in this endeavour if you haven't already is vi. The vi bindings are invaluable as they are mirrored in many other unix programs e.g. more/less and aptitude. There is also `set -o vi` which enables vi on the commandline.
Make sure your scripts are well commented and well structured. The minimal extra time/effort it takes to make the code maintainable saves much effort and head scratching when you come back to it later.
A nice tutorial site for sed: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html
and a handy reference file: http://sed.sourceforge.net/sed1line.txt
Good luck,
cheers,
Owen.
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