Bash Scripting

The shell is the standard interface to every Unix and Linux system; users and administrators alike have experience with the shell, and combining commands into shell scripts is a natural progression. However, that is only the tip of the iceberg. The shell is actually a full programming language, with variables and functions, and also more advanced structures such as arrays (including associative arrays), and being so directly linked to the kernel, it has native file I/O primitives built into its very syntax, as well as process and job control. All of the main features that Unix is best known for are available in the shell, and available to shell scripts.