Linux and UNIX Tools and Utilities Training
Course 396
4 DAY COURSE

To realize the full processing power of your UNIX/Linux system, you need to choose the right tools and use them in the right combination. In this training course, you learn how to leverage the many tools and utilities in the UNIX operating system to upgrade your UNIX/Linux administration skills, maximize productivity, and streamline tasks by adding shell commands, filters, and languages — like awk.

Linux and UNIX Tools and Utilities Training Benefits

• In this Linux and UNIX training, you will learn how to:

  • Build and use UNIX/Linux tools and utilities.
  • Perform complex search strings using regular expressions.
  • Explore extended regular expressions with grep, sed, and awk.
  • Employ text filters to manipulate text and data.

• Prerequisites

  You should have familiarity with user-level UNIX commands, such as ls, rm, cd, cp, mv, and mkdir, and have knowledge at the level of:

  • Learning Tree course 428, {course:428}, or
  • Learning Tree course 143, Introduction to Linux Training.

Linux and UNIX Tools Training Outline

Module 1: Linux and UNIX Fundamentals

The evolution of Linux and UNIX

• Exploring the history of UNIX
• Examining current Linux/UNIX standards

Reviewing UNIX commands

• Manipulating files and directories
• Writing shell start-up files

Uncovering UNIX documentation

• Utilizing the man command
• Investigating other manual page browsers

Module 2: Searching Text with Regular Expressions

Working with regular expressions

• Specifying string patterns for filtering operations
• The meta character set
• Developing extended regular expressions

Implementing the grep command

• Processing files
• Processing command output

Module 3: Filtering Text

Defining the characteristics of a filter

• Reading from standard input
• Writing to standard output and standard error
• Combining filters into pipelines to perform complex tasks

Performing tasks with common filters

• Editing the output of commands with the stream editor sed
• Translating characters with tr
• Sorting files and command output
• Comparing different versions of files with diff
• Using other common filters: cut and uniq
• Combining filters for complex text processing
• Executing filter commands with find

Module 4: Programming with Shell Scripts

Exploring shell basics

• Writing simple shell scripts
• Storing data in shell variables

Controlling logic flow

• Making decisions with if and case
• Quoting shell commands to control substitutions
• Testing file attributes, strings and numbers
• Reading and testing standard input
• Looping with for and while
• Accessing the shell's built-in variables

Integrating other shell features

• Accepting command-line arguments
• Redirecting standard output
• Substituting command output
• Performing arithmetic in shell scripts
• Scanning for command line options

Working with tools creatively

• Combining filters with pipelines and command substitution
• Developing scripts incrementally

Module 5: Restructuring Data with awk

Establishing awk as a flexible search tool

• Writing useful awk one-liners
• Testing and extracting fields from structured input
• Performing arithmetic calculations

Creating long awk scripts

• Matching patterns with extended regular expressions
• Modifying awk's default behavior with special patterns and built-in variables

Extending awk capabilities

• Using awk's control constructs for testing and looping
• Storing data in arrays
• Formatting output using printf
• Searching files with multi-line records