Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi All,

I am facing an issue. I need your advise. I want to take my unix skills to the next level. I want to verse in scripting now. I got some understanding of programming. I did a little bit of C++, Assembly in College.
I got some basics in perl. I am wondering if It would be best to familiarize myself more with perl or to start learning KSH. I am asking because I wouldn't like to keep learning Perl and than I need to do some stuffs that I can't do in perl and that would be easier in KSH. ( I am saying KSH because I could see a lot of people are using it).

So, If you think that it would be best to master KSH first, please recommend the best book for me to get. So, my bigger problem is which language I need to focus on now: Perl or KSH?

Please note, I alreay read a lot in the FAQ in the forums on that matter and didn't find the ansswer to my specific matter.

Thanks so much,

Learn Perl!
It's the only shell language you have to learn.
You can do "anything" with it!

I second what markkusi said about Perl. Everything that KSH can do, can be done in Perl, plus many many more. The thing is, some problems are easier to achieve with other tools. For field/text processing I would suggest AWK, which can be huge timesaver, when used properly. Plus when you are used to programming in AWK, some problems become so trivial, that you solve them without even much thinking

Perl is not a shell langage. There's no runtime prompt, it's completely noninteractive. The same goes for awk.

So, the shell you'll be using to run these perl scripts will probably be KSH. You might as well learn to use it properly.