Scripts / Tools

Using Operating System Tools

This course is designed for users who have mastered basic commands for manipulating files and navigating directories and are ready to begin using powerful data manipulation tools and shells.

Basic programming constructs are introduced in the context of scripting languages.

You will devise scripts (written in any of several scripting languages) that interact with users, access command-line arguments, make decisions, and return success/failure exit statuses.

This course combines coverage of the shell language and working environment with advanced utilities such as perl, sort, grep, sed, and awk.

Course Information

Duration:

8 weeks, 13 hours per week (104 hours)

Weekly:

3 hours lecture (professor)
3 hours lab (professor)
7 hours group work (instructor)

Environment

Unix: Sun Solaris, Linux (Intel platform)
Microsoft Windows: Intel platform

Prerequisites

To succeed in this course, you must already be able to:

	Create and edit ASCII text files using some Text Editor Unix: vi, ed, etc. Windows: notepad, write, vim, etc.
	Navigate among files and directories Unix: cd, ls, pwd, etc. Windows: cd, dir, pwd, etc.
	Use basic tools to manipulate files and directories Unix: rm, cp, cat, mkdir, etc. Windows: delete, copy, type, mkdir, etc.

Course Learning Objectives

After this course, you will have acquired the following skills:

Basic Skills:

	Programming: variables, loops, branching, conditional statements
	Elementary and advanced scripting using both shells and tools
	Character, text, number, and string manipulation

Shell Environment:

	Scripting
	Environment variables, search path, input/output redirection
	Aliases, command history
	Exit status, determining if a command failed
	Conditional statements

Searching and sorting:

	Extract information from files using patterns and regular expressions (perl, grep, sed, awk, ed, ex, sh, ksh, csh)
	Sort files and data by field (perl, sort)

Editing and reporting:

	Perform complex and/or global noninteractive edits on many files (perl, sed, ed, ex)
	Summarize and report on log files, data files, system information (perl, awk)