Flame war between bash/fish/zsh/powershell is almost meaningless to beginners, because the basic skills are common to all shells. (That said, you will love zsh once you use it)

I learned to use shell, about 7 years ago, by reading O'Reilly "Classic Shell Scripting". It is well written, and teach you something that you can hardly learn from google. But don't try to remember everything, especially those advanced string manipulation syntax, because one would usually use a scripting language such as ruby for advanced job.

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lambyJun 2017

> I learned to use shell, about 7 years ago, by reading O'Reilly "Classic Shell Scripting".

I can second this recommendation. :)

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joepvdJan 2017

The resource that has been instrumental for me to move up from beginner-that-generally-can-work-out-things-with-a-lot-of-random-tries, to someone who often has things right on the first try, and if not, have a clue of what is going on , has been the following book:

Classic Shell Scripting Arnold Robbins, Nelson H.F. Beebe

Recommend it to anyone with a basic understanding and a will to learn more. It also really doubles as a rich information resource. Cannot recommend it enough if books are your thing.

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knethJul 2014

Now and then I reread a chapter of "Classic Shell Scripting" (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596005955.do) - probably the best book on shell script I know.

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