Vi and Bash books

seelk · 2006-02-04 00:36:12

I'm in the market for buying a good Vi and Bash books. I'm in between of Beginner and Intermediate when it comes to both. Does anyone have recommendations? Thanks.

scottro · 2006-02-04 00:42:19

Well, for vi there is the O'Reilly book. It has some good things,though, like many O'Reilly books, sometimes, there are so many esoteric points that you can't find the simple answer you need.

They also have a bash book, which has some nice things.

However, if it's simply shellscripting that you're looking for with bash, the two that I found best (though both have some very elementary things as well, which can be a nuisance) are the Sam's Teach Yourself Shell Scripting in 24 Hours (or something close enough to that title) and Unix Shell Programming by Stephen Kochan and Patrick Wood.

Hope this helps

iphitus · 2006-02-04 00:55:09

Really, for bash.

The best thing I ever read was the Advanced Bash scripting guide.
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

For something simpler,
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guid … index.html

They are truly some of the greatest resources. If you must get it printed, get the PDF and get that printed off at a print shop or at home.

I dont think its worth spending the money when such awesome and practical resources are available online free.

And IMHO the same for vi. Just work out how to use it very basically, how to open, edit, close and save something. Then anything else, look it up in vim's tips on the website or ask someone knowledgable.

iphitus

Dusty · 2006-02-04 03:50:07

Mark Sobel's 'A practical guide to Linux' has a good intro to both of those, as well as describing how to get the most out of standard Unix utilities like grep and awk.... worth a read.

Dusty

mac57 · 2006-02-06 15:31:33

I would concur with Dusty's recommendation. I have just purchased Sobel's book and am reading it. Well worth the money. I have used unix and then linux now for many years, but even so, I am picking up things I never knew before about bash as I read this book. As I said, well worth it.

For vi, the BEST book I have EVER read, but it may be out of print now, is entitled "The Ultimate Guide to the VI and EX Text Editors", attributed simply to "Hewlett Packard". The ISBN is 0-8053-4460-8. My copy is copyrighted 1990, by the Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc.

This book *is* the ultimate guide - it is my vi "bible" and I have kept it close at hand ever since I got it. It is beautifully laid out, well organized, and written in a clean concise style. You WILL learn things you didn't know about vi, I promise. I have written and released my own text editor, VE (available at www.campbellware.com - I would encourage you to have a look) and I used the layout of this book as the example for the manual I wrote to go with my editor... it is that good.

Have a look and see if you can get The Ultimate Guide to the VI and EX Text Editors. If not, the Sobel book is excellent, though not as deep. Finally, do visit www.campbellware.com and try out VE. You will like it! Strong multi file support, horizontal scrolling for wide files, support for rectangular regions (I think only emacs has this, and emacs is MUCH bigger), interactive macros, global undo, etc. etc. etc. All of this in a tiny 70K executable. Like Arch, I have worked at keeping VE tight, efficient and focused.

paranoos · 2006-02-06 21:26:55

heh We used Sobel's "Practical Guide" as a textbook for our Linux course in college.

It's a good book, however I find it a bit outdated for some of the tools (although most of it is still relevant), and the scope is just humongous (ie he covers too many things for what you'd like to learn).

For instance, he teaches awk in that book. Awk is quite complex, and no matter how many times I've used it, I haven't memorized a single thing except the { print } command.

I was going to recommend vimtutor, however it seems you already know how to use the program. I remember it only teaching the basic essential commands needed to use vim every day.

Bash and Vi documentation (as well as mplayer, come to think of it) really do cover everything you'd want to learn, but they're just so LONG, and aren't aimed at helping you learn anything, but provide a list of things you can do in a haphazard way. That's not a complaint, I'd expect official docs to be that way, they aren't really for learning.

ben017f · 2006-02-21 01:03:59

EDIT: Please don't suggest illegal activities in the forums. -Snowman

iphitus · 2006-02-21 05:21:17

delete last post? doesnt sound legal to me...

iphitus

Snowman · 2006-02-21 07:08:31

iphitus wrote:

delete last post? doesnt sound legal to me...
iphitus

Done.

klapmuetz · 2006-02-25 13:33:34

First of all:

Ditch vi, and go with vim. There are so much more features in the 'improved' version that are impossible in the standard vi implementation.

If you just want to get a hang of how to navigate and edit files, use 'vimtutor'.

If you successfully finished this, you might want to check out this (I think fantastic) howto approach. http://vi-improved.org/tutorial.php

If you want more, go with this OPL-Book:
http://truth.sk/vim/

HTH,
klapmuetz

arooaroo · 2006-02-25 15:24:25

Not a book, but I knocked up a one-page cheat sheet for common VIM commands a while back:

http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/vim/vim.pdf

ben017f · 2006-03-15 21:21:10

ben017f wrote:

EDIT: Please don't suggest illegal activities in the forums. -Snowman

appologies... i thought i'd seen it on a legit website and pretty sure o'reilly have released stuff in this way before!

again appologies if not

dtw · 2006-03-16 08:45:42

Dusty wrote:

Mark Sobel's 'A practical guide to Linux' has a good intro to both of those, as well as describing how to get the most out of standard Unix utilities like grep and awk.... worth a read.
Dusty

Thanks Dusty - I spotted this book in a store and thought it looked better than "Nutshell". Now I shall definitely buy it

arooaroo · 2006-03-16 09:09:43

I own a copy of Steve Oualine's Vi Improved - Vim, published by New Riders. Almost 600 pages of vim goodness

dtw · 2006-03-20 14:31:18

Order on Amazon Friday - came today It was estimated to arrive Thursday...

arooaroo · 2006-03-20 18:41:03

dibblethewrecker wrote:

Order on Amazon Friday - came today It was estimated to arrive Thursday...

Yeah, well Amazon always over-estimate their delivery dates to give them some slack. It has the added benefit of lowering buyers' expections, and thus makes them look really great when they seriously exceed that expection by delivering in a(n average) timely manner.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-02-04 00:36:12

Vi and Bash books

#2 2006-02-04 00:42:19

Re: Vi and Bash books

#3 2006-02-04 00:55:09

Re: Vi and Bash books

#4 2006-02-04 03:50:07

Re: Vi and Bash books

#5 2006-02-06 15:31:33

Re: Vi and Bash books

#6 2006-02-06 21:26:55

Re: Vi and Bash books

#7 2006-02-21 01:03:59

Re: Vi and Bash books

#8 2006-02-21 05:21:17

Re: Vi and Bash books

#9 2006-02-21 07:08:31

Re: Vi and Bash books

#10 2006-02-25 13:33:34

Re: Vi and Bash books

#11 2006-02-25 15:24:25

Re: Vi and Bash books

#12 2006-03-15 21:21:10

Re: Vi and Bash books

#13 2006-03-16 08:45:42

Re: Vi and Bash books

#14 2006-03-16 09:09:43

Re: Vi and Bash books

#15 2006-03-20 14:31:18

Re: Vi and Bash books

#16 2006-03-20 18:41:03

Re: Vi and Bash books

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