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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting 100 interesting shell scripting problems Post 302849409 by nickednamed on Sunday 1st of September 2013 09:57:27 AM
Old 09-01-2013
100 interesting shell scripting problems

Hi all,

I'm just learning to write shell scripts (new to the whole UNIX thing) and I'm wondering if anyone would like to help me create a resource to help me, and others like me, learn scripting. It would be something like "100 interesting shell scripting problems".

All I need are suggestions for interesting problems to solve using shell scripting.

My motivation / reasoning is this: I've been learning for a while, but as I'm doing it for pleasure (not for work), I don't really need to write a lot of shell scripts. I've already written a few simple scripts to automate some of my daily tasks, but I want to take my scripting to the next level.

I've got a lot of great books, tutorials, web pages, etc. to help me learn, but they are mostly used for reference, as the examples they include are rather general / trivial, and they don't have many exercises.

Basically, I have a lack of "interesting problems to solve" and therefore a lack of real learning opportunities and practice. I know that others have the same problem too.

So, I'm looking to create a list of practical, interesting, real-world problems which gradually increase in difficulty. It will be similar to thekarangoel's git repo "Projects" where you can learn Python by solving the problems given (sorry, can't post links yet).

As an example, in case I'm not making myself clear, there could be a list of categories, such as:
- Account Admin
- Backup
- Games
- Networking
- File manipulation
- etc.

Each category would contain a number of problems to solve. Some (rubbish) examples might be:
- Create a script which counts the number of users currently logged in.
- Create a script which backs up all the dotfiles for the current user.
- Create a script which converts all file names to lowercase and removes whitespaces.
- Create a script which converts Markdown formatted text into HTML files.

It will be a kind of learn-by-doing system. The learner will be responsible for finding the information and resources necessary to solve the problem, and may upload his solution for others to study. The problems could include difficulty ratings, hints / tips, suggestions or links to solutions or helpful resources to aid the learner, if need be.

I would make the resource available online as a webpage, wiki, git repo, ebook, or whatever else people want.

As I said, I'm happy to do the heavy lifting myself, but lack of knowledge / experience stops me from creating meaningful problems, or even decent categories of problems / tasks.

Any feedback, help or suggestions would be very much appreciated, but as stated at the beginning all I need to get started are suggestions for interesting problems to solve using shell scripting.

Thank you,

Nickednamed

Last edited by nickednamed; 09-01-2013 at 03:35 PM.. Reason: Grammar, style
 

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jrunscript(1)						      General Commands Manual						     jrunscript(1)

NAME
jrunscript - command line script shell SYNOPSIS
jrunscript [ options ] [ arguments... ] PARAMETERS
options Options, if used, should follow immediately after the command name. arguments Arguments, if used, should follow immediately after options or command name. DESCRIPTION
jrunscript is a command line script shell. jrunscript supports both an interactive (read-eval-print) mode and a batch (-f option) mode of script execution. This is a scripting language independent shell. By default, JavaScript is the language used, but the -l option can be used to specify a different language. Through Java to scripting language communication, jrunscript supports "exploratory programming" style. NOTE: This tool is experimental and may not be available in future versions of the JDK. OPTIONS
-classpath path Specify where to find the user's .class files that are accessed by the script. -cp path This is a synonym for -classpath path -Dname=value Set a Java system property. -Jflag Pass flag directly to the Java virtual machine on which jrunscript is run. -l language Use the specified scripting language. By default, JavaScript is used. Note that to use other scripting languages, you also need to spec- ify the corresponding script engine's jar file using -cp or -classpath option. -e script Evaluate the given script. This option can be used to run "one liner" scripts specified completely on the command line. -encoding encoding Specify the character encoding used while reading script files. -f script-file Evaluate the given script file (batch mode). -f - Read and evaluate a script from standard input (interactive mode). -help Output help message and exit. -? Output help message and exit. -q List all script engines available and exit. ARGUMENTS
If [arguments...] are present and if no -e or -f option is used, then the first argument is the script file and the rest of the arguments, if any, are passed as script arguments. If [arguments..] and -e or -f option are used, then all [arguments..] are passed as script argu- ments. If [arguments..], -e and -f are missing, interactive mode is used. Script arguments are available to a script in an engine variable named "arguments" of type String array. EXAMPLES
Executing inline scripts jrunscript -e "print('hello world')" jrunscript -e "cat('http://java.sun.com')" Use specified language and evaluate given script file jrunscript -l js -f test.js Interactive mode jrunscript js>print('hello world'); hello world js>34 + 55 89 js> thread(function() { print('hello world'); } hello world js> Run script file with script arguments jrunscript test.js arg1 arg2 arg3 test.js is script file to execute and arg1, arg2 and arg3 are passed to script as script arguments. Script can access these using "argu- ments" array. SEE ALSO
If JavaScript is used, then before evaluating any user defined script, jrunscript initializes certain built-in functions and objects. These JavaScript built-ins are documented in jsdocs. 06 Aug 2006 jrunscript(1)
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