The primary purpose of this chapter is to give you enough knowledge about the Linux shell/Bash to get you up and running, as that the remainder of the book will just fall into place.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Getting started with Bash and CLI fundamentals
• Creating and using basic variables
• Hidden Bash variables and reserved words
• Conditional logic using if, else, and elseif
• Case/switch statements and loop constructs
• Using functions and parameters
• Including source files
• Parsing program input parameters
• Standard in, standard out, and standard error
• Linking commands using pipes
• Finding more information about the commands used within Bash