2 - Where to start

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2 - Where to start
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You should always start with very simple scripts that you really don't have
any practical use for but still *could* be of practical use =)

As for first let's make what we already know to a *real* executable script.
Open a text editor (name the file myscript.sh) and type this:




#!/bin/bash

echo -n "password: "
read pass
echo "Your pass is $pass"

save & exit --- then do this command: chmod u+x myscript.sh
Then we can execute it:

alien:~$ ./myscript.sh
password:
Your pass is
alien:~$

The "#!/bin/bash" at the start of the file is to let the script know what
shell type it should use.

The "chmod u+x myscript.sh" is to make it executable.
(change-mode user+execute-right-on myscript.sh) ..... read the manual pages
on chmod for more info on it =)

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Take alot of time to play around in your system, open files, figure out
what they do (but don't edit or remove them).

Take time also to learn some good text editor, that's important.
Learn, emacs or vi, those are by most people considerd the absolutly best,
but jed, joe, elvis, pico or any simple editor like that will do
just fine for now.

emacs and vi are explained later in this tutorial.


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Another thing before moving on is that you can export a variable from a
script.

Say that you have the variable "$var" in a script and want to export
it to the system for use with some other script or something, you can
do: export var

Like this little script:

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#!/bin/bash

VAR="10"
export VAR

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Note: VAR="10" can not be written as VAR = "10", since it's
'whitespace-sensetive'.

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But more to how to make scripts in a second, I just thought that this would
be a good time to enlighten you about this.

So here we go!