Shell Programming and Scripting

Im reading a lot about wget and have really enjoyed using it. However I see a lot of tutorials that will show several ways. I want to be able to write scripts in gedit so I was wondering what is the best process to do this instead of just running them in the terminal??

Wget is no different than any command in a script, you can test the results using the exit status $? (highly recommended, but move it into a variable ret=$? immediately as everything sets it) or grep in log files of stderr 2>logfile for magic words (hard to anticipate every fatal log message). The files it writes should have size [ -s data_file ], too. The idea of scripts and wget supporting them is unattended operation like from cron.

is the proper way of writing .sh files still to declare #!/bin/bash in the header?

Ive noticed many files are

Code:

wget /
  procedure /
  procedure /
  procedure /

I would assume the backslash is required for every line?? Also I see wget has three ways to do it but I never see the short coding structure. IE: -X list but rather than --exclude list/ Can you shed light on this? Last how can you define what should go first? I know the address is always last but if you want a lot of rules how can you choose which to go with first?

The #! thing is actually exec() not shell in particular. You can write your own file interpreter and get it called by scripts in your language with #!. See man execvp. The path must be absolute and you are allowed one argument, for commands like sed and awk that need a '-f to introduce a script not on stdin. Without the #!, text files are sent to stdin on sh. Execute permissions are a good idea, too.

You have to read bash scripts as bash, and wget and other external command calls in sh/ksh/bash are from the command to unquoted ';', '&', '<', '>', '#>' or end of line not escaped by '\'. The '&', '>', '<' or '#>' are directions to the shell on how to call the command. A bash tutorial might be a good read. There are many online. The bash man page is both long and insufficient in explanation for a novice, more a reference as you grow into it.