Historically, operating systems generally come with some form of scripting language which admins and power users can use to create custom tools. Harking back to the home computer craze of the 1970s ...

If you're not yet comfortable with writing scripts on Unix and Linux systems, this post might get you off to a healthy start. Creating a script on a Unix or Linux system can be dead easy or ...

Don't expose your system with sloppy scripts! Although a Linux desktop or server is less susceptible to viruses and malware than a typical Windows device, there isn't a device on the internet that isn ...

This post follows up on Part 1 by examining the many ways that you can test the value of variables – e.g., whether they equal particular strings like “yes” or “no”, if they have a numeric value, if ...

Have you ever wanted to read a file one line at a time in a shell script and found the task to be a lot more trouble than you ever imagined? If you use a “for line ...

Bring your GitHub repository to the next level of functionality. For the past year since Microsoft has acquired GitHub, I've been hosting my Git repositories on a private server. Although I relished ...

A recent post about debugging constructs surprised me. There were quite a few comments about how you didn’t need a debugger, as long as you had printf. For that matter, we’ve all debugged systems ...

Each Linux command returns an exit code, with 0 indicating success and non-zero values indicating failure. You can use the $? variable to access the exit code and control program flow in scripts. Be ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about disruptive ideas in science, technology and culture. Update, Oct. 11. I've included text below that is taken ...