For system administrators shell scripting can be a very useful way to drastically improve workflow. Join Swayam Prakasha to find out how you can employ some fundemental tips and techniques to make your life easier…

So you're not a programmer, you say? If you can string a few shell commands together, it's not much of a step from there to programming. To demonstrate that, I'll take you through the steps of writing a very simple web gallery script: one that will take your images and build a little web page to show them off.

Shell programming is heavily dependent on string processing. The term string is used generically to refer to any sequence of characters; typical examples of strings might be a line of input or a single argument to a command. Users enter responses to prompts, file names are generated, and commands produce output.