>
> or an explanation of pipes, or how to use the semi-colon on the command
> line, or parentheses to make subshells, but some of those are even a little
> advanced.
>
Yeah, subshells and an actual explanation of pipes and how they work is
quite advanced...

 The biggest questions I have are about the best order to teach things in.
> What's best -- explain the concept of a shell, or just start typing
> commands?  Probably the former, then go to the kernel/shell concept, then
> back to commands.

I think you're right.
I'd start out with a little history on the shell, this doesn't have to be
Bash specific.
Just touch on the conception of, "The Shell".

Maybe mention some stuff about how a shell is a command interpreter.
It's another layer of abstraction between the operating system and the user.
Mention something to the affect of shell scripting is *really* just a way
of gluing together system calls, tools, utilities, and other programs.
Why do we need a shell? What you can do/should do/ should not do with the
shell.
Mention shell limitations.

How much time do you have with these students? One day?

-> Jake

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:52 PM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks, but that is way, way too advanced for the people I'll be working
> with.  The level should be more like "there's a 'sort' command and this is
> what it does," or an explanation of pipes, or how to use the semi-colon on
> the command line, or parentheses to make subshells, but some of those are
> even a little advanced.  These are psychology and genetics grad students.
>
> The biggest questions I have are about the best order to teach things in.
> What's best -- explain the concept of a shell, or just start typing
> commands?  Probably the former, then go to the kernel/shell concept, then
> back to commands.  They need to know about "arguments" and "options". They
> don't know anything.  I know that they can make good use of sort, grep and
> awk for grabbing certain info in big data files.  They need to know how to
> use 'less' for looking at output.  Then there are gazillions more little
> things that we use like cp, mv, cd, df, du, cut, paste, tr and a lot of
> aliases, plus a lot more that I can't think of off the cuff.
>
> Like I said, I've done this before but I was hoping someone knew some good
> web pages for the basics, in a step-by-step kind of layout.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On Wed, 20 Mar 2013, Jake Vath wrote:
>
>  I, typically, point people to the Advanced Bash-Scripting
>> Guide<http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/**html/ <http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/>>
>>
>> .
>> Although the title says 'Advanced', It has a good introduction to shell
>> programming (who's, what's, why's...etc).
>> It also has a great section on the 'Basics' of shell scripting.
>>
>> I reference this guide quite ofter.
>> I hope this helps.
>>
>> -> Jake
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  I have been doing this now and then for a long time, but resources on the
>>> web are always changing and there may be lots of good new stuff.  The
>>> thing
>>> is, there's always so much out there that it's hard to decide which
>>> things
>>> to use.
>>>
>>> I'll be teaching a group of grad students how to use our Linux server
>>> next
>>> Tuesday.  I always start by showing the basic commands like ls, rm,
>>> mkdir,
>>> etc.  The best thing would be to minimize class time dedicated to that
>>> kind
>>> of thing and give them something nice on the web that will show them a
>>> lot
>>> of the most useful things people do from the command prompt. There's so
>>> much to know and it's hard to decide where to start and where to end.  So
>>> I'd like to give them something they can use to go much farther on their
>>> own, for those who want to do that.
>>>
>>> It would be great to hear from you guys if you have some ideas about
>>> good web resources for training Linux users (all using Bash shell). Thanks.
>>>
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