Notes for this meeting will be less detailed than usual, as the stardard note-taker was presenting, and therefore unable to take notes.
With the normal Stautzenberger room unavaliable for the past few meetings, it has been a bit of a challenge to find good meeting locations. This meeting started out in Pl 3020, which was reserved a month in advance. However, the room was found locked, and attempts to call security, campus police, campus events, etc… failed.
The presentation was moved to North Engineering 1026 (Sun Microsystems Lab), so that everyone could have a computer with BASH. Unfortunately, the luck in this room was not much better. The projector was set up for a Sun computer, and would not work with Abdul's or Andrew's laptops. It was suggested to simply present on the Solaris machine, however no USB ports were found. Additionally, Sun hardware is a bit different, and a new keyboard layout was making life difficult.
At this point, we were at a bit of a loss as to how to present. However, Abdul stepped in to save the day, using the Solaris box to SSH into his laptop, providing the the presentation files, a familiar BASH setup, and common Linux utilities (Many normal Linux commands and settings were unavaliable on the UT configured Solaris machines). Abdul then made his way around and made sure everyone was able to get a working BASH shell on the Sun computers. After a 20 minute delay, Andrew was ready to present Introduction to the BASH Shell, using Sun Microsystem's hardware, and Abdul's laptop's Linux software.
Presentation files, cheat sheats, and examples can be found at the above link. In total, there were 13 people in attendance, mostly students. Many of the planned examples and demonstrations did not work as expected, given the unconventional presentation setup. However, aside from the quirks in the beginning, I think we had a good presentation about BASH programming, and I am sure we will use some of the concepts learned in the near future.
As a brief recap, we covered
Using The Shell
Configuring BASH
Using Commands
Working With Variables
Loops And Conditionals
Scripting
What is the difference between bashrc and bash_profile?
bash_profile is loaded every time you login, while bashrc is loaded every time you start a terminal.
What is vi BASH mode?
By default, BASH keybindings follow an emacs-like binding. This can be switched to a vi style based on user preference.
Does the variable $0 hold the entire command line, or just the BASH script's name?
It was settled, via testing, that $0 held the name of the BASH script name, while in other languages such as awk it held the entire line.
Does Tux really like fish?
Yes.
Since most of the people present at the meeting were students, someone made the comment that many books on BASH are available for FREE on OhioLink via safari books online.