knowledge less wrote:
Is there a similar book on shell programming like Y Kanetkar's Unix Shell Programming, but one that is current. Kanetkar's book is quite old and no new editions. I need a book which has lots of exercises like Kanetkar's and is easy too like the one.
First you need to decide what shell are you comfortable with, options being ksh, bash, csh, zsh and others. ksh is for very serious scripting and is possibly the most extensive, csh is complicated and you need to be aware of 'C' programming/syntax (i could be wrong though). bash is the easiest (being the default on most distros). zsh though not as popular, is like using ksh features with the ease of bash.
See these for bash anyways: 'Advanced Bash Scripting Guide' is always current: http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
These guys also do a good job: http://www.cyberciti.biz/nixcraft/linux/docs/uniqlinuxfeatures/lsst/
Additionally, you need to know tools like sed, awk, grep, tr, cut to start off with.