Effective Shell
A Practical User's Guide to Working Smarter on the Command Line
Published on 29. July 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
456 pages
978-1-7185-0414-1 (ISBN)
Description
One trait that defines great technologists is their ability to make their tools work for them by adapting the tools to their unique styles and needs. This book will help you do just that by using the shell. Investing a few hours in learning the command line techniques in Effective Shell will have a huge impact on your productivity. It will also make your work more fun. The shell's simple text-based interface lets you maintain a state of creative flow, free from the distractions of a graphical environment. This isn't a book on shell scripting or Linux administration. Each chapter presents a stand-alone set of techniques to help you work more efficiently, understand your system better, and tailor your environment to your individual workflow. This book doesn't ask you to totally change the way you work or drop your current tooling. Instead, it brings together a set of skills that you can add to your toolkit and incorporate as you like. The author focuses on the essentials that allow you to immediately apply the new skill rather than describing every possible feature. The goal is for you to be able to pick up the book, read a chapter over coffee, and try out what you've learned right away.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
San Francisco
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
910 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-7185-0414-1 (9781718504141)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
07/2025
No Starch Press
€38.99
Available for download
Person
Dave Kerr is a software engineer and consultant with over 15 years of experience helping teams design modern platforms, scale infrastructure, and automate everything from deployment to developer onboarding. He has led high-stakes engineering initiatives, from launching digital banks to building telco backends, and today focuses on agentic AI, developer experience, and open source. Outside the terminal, you'll find him in the mountains or clinging to a rock face.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Core Skills
Chapter 1: Flying on the Command Line
Chapter 2: Thinking in Pipelines
Chapter 3: Finding Files
Part II: Manipulating Text and Streams
Chapter 4: Regular Expression Essentials
Chapter 5: Getting to Grips with grep
Chapter 6: Slicing and Dicing Text
Chapter 7: Advanced Text Manipulation with sed
Chapter 8: Building Commands on the Fly
Part III: Shell Scripting
Chapter 9: Shell Script Fundamentals
Chapter 10: Using Variables to Store, Read, and Manipulate Data
Chapter 11: Mastering Conditional Logic
Chapter 12: Using Loops with Files and Folders
Chapter 13: Functions, Parameters, and Error Handling
Chapter 14: Useful Patterns for Shell Scripts
Part IV: Building Your Toolkit
Chapter 15: Configuring Your Shell
Chapter 16: Customizing Your Command Prompt
Chapter 17: Managing Your Dot Files
Chapter 18: Controlling Changes with Git
Chapter 19: Managing Remote Git Repositories and Sharing Dot Files
Part V: Advanced Techniques
Chapter 20: Shell Expansion
Chapter 21: Alternatives to Shell Scripting
Chapter 22: The Secure Shell
Chapter 23: The Power of Terminal Editors
Chapter 24: Mastering the Multiplexer
Afterword: Generative AI and the Shell
Appendix A: Setup
Appendix B: Shell Basics
Index
Introduction
Part I: Core Skills
Chapter 1: Flying on the Command Line
Chapter 2: Thinking in Pipelines
Chapter 3: Finding Files
Part II: Manipulating Text and Streams
Chapter 4: Regular Expression Essentials
Chapter 5: Getting to Grips with grep
Chapter 6: Slicing and Dicing Text
Chapter 7: Advanced Text Manipulation with sed
Chapter 8: Building Commands on the Fly
Part III: Shell Scripting
Chapter 9: Shell Script Fundamentals
Chapter 10: Using Variables to Store, Read, and Manipulate Data
Chapter 11: Mastering Conditional Logic
Chapter 12: Using Loops with Files and Folders
Chapter 13: Functions, Parameters, and Error Handling
Chapter 14: Useful Patterns for Shell Scripts
Part IV: Building Your Toolkit
Chapter 15: Configuring Your Shell
Chapter 16: Customizing Your Command Prompt
Chapter 17: Managing Your Dot Files
Chapter 18: Controlling Changes with Git
Chapter 19: Managing Remote Git Repositories and Sharing Dot Files
Part V: Advanced Techniques
Chapter 20: Shell Expansion
Chapter 21: Alternatives to Shell Scripting
Chapter 22: The Secure Shell
Chapter 23: The Power of Terminal Editors
Chapter 24: Mastering the Multiplexer
Afterword: Generative AI and the Shell
Appendix A: Setup
Appendix B: Shell Basics
Index