Gain insights into the intricacies of the Bash shell, ideal for beginners. Delve into essential skills with interactive learning designed to ensure lasting knowledge without requiring prior experience.

dockerbash.tar.gz

tset

A course for anyone interested in understanding all aspects of the bash shell. Designed for use by beginners, it assumes as little knowledge as possible but teaches you all the intricacies of bash it took me decades to learn by trial and error. 

The interactive nature of the course instills the knowledge in a way you will not forget!

Master the Bash Shell

If you've come across it before, you may have wondered what the `*` in bash commands really means, and how it is different from *regular expressions*.

> Note: Do not panic if you don’t know what regular expressions are. Regular expressions are patterns used to search for matching strings. Globs look similar and perform a similar function, but are not the same. That’s the key point to understand about globs vs regular expressions.


# How Important is this Lesson?

Globbing and quoting are essential topics when using bash. It's rare to
come across a set of commands or a script that doesn't depend on knowledge
of them.

# Globbing

Type these commands into the terminal:



-   **Line 1** creates three files (`file1`, `file2`, `file3`)

-   **Line 2** runs the `ls` command, asking to list the files matching `*`

-   **Line 3** runs the `echo` command using `*` as the argument to `echo`

Type all the commands in this lesson out in the terminal below.


> Note: continue to use this terminal during this lesson. Throughout this course it is assumed that you complete each lesson by typing in the commands in the provided terminal for that lesson in the order the commands are given.

You should be able to see the three files listed when both, **line 4** and **line 5**, are executed.

The shell took the `*` character and converted it to match all the files in the current working directory.  In other words, it has converted the `*` character into the string `file1 file2 file3` and then processed the resulting command.

# Quoting

What do you think will be output if we run these commands?

Think about it first, make a prediction, and then type it out!



This lesson will introduce you to the joy of quoting in bash. You will learn what globbing is and what its special characters are. It’ll also explain the difference between single and double quotes, and you’ll learn the difference between globs and regular expressions.

Core Bash

Scripting Bash

Bash in Practice

Advanced Bash

Globbing and Quoting

How Important is this Lesson?

Globbing