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Re: Programming languages that make DBA's lives easier

From: Les Ayudo <info_at_lesayudo.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 15:38:40 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.00550E42.20030218153840@fatcity.com>


RE: Programming languages that make DBA's lives easierI have Unix Shell Programming revised Edition by Kochan and Wood. Haven't had time to sit down and read it but it's supposed to be really good.

  If you are just learning Korn Shell programming, I'd recommend

  The Korn Shell (3rd edition)
  by Anatole Olczak

  it's better than others I have seen, but basic... you won't get deep enough to make any huge programs, but it should be enough for you're Oracle DBA needs.

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Janardhana Babu Donga [mailto:jbdonga_at_ucdavis.edu]   Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 2:29 PM   To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L   Subject: RE: Programming languages that make DBA's lives easier

  What are the good books you guys recommend for Shell Programming? I have old   edition of UNIX shells by example (by Ellie Quigley). I need to replace this   with some good book.

  Do I need to learn perl before reading PERL for DBAs? If so, what are the   good perl books do you guys recommend?

  -----Original Message-----
  Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 1:04 PM   To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

  I thought it might be worthwhile to say WHY I prefer ksh for most scripting.

  As one writer put it, use a language you know. I've used ksh for years, so   that is certainly one big factor in preferring it. But, that aside, if you   use mostly the Bourne Shell syntax and stay away from the some of the Korn   Shell syntactical candy that doesn't do anything extra, then your scripts   are very easy to read, and are mostly self-documenting. For me, that is a   big advantage.

  If you use ksh, then you need to become reasonably proficient with a few of   the more important utilities such as sed and awk/nawk/gawk and become   familiar with good old regular expressions (wonderful stuff!).

  One area where ksh is weak is its inability to set up a two-way socket with   a child process like sqlplus. Perl can do this (for example, by using   IPC::Open2). With ksh, you can send to the child, and you can receive from   the child, but you can't converse with the child. Even with the coprocess   (which is a pain to use), you still have one-way communication at any given   time. However, 99% of the time, ksh will work fine. For that other 1% (OK,   maybe 2%), you either figure out a workable compromise with ksh, or you use   perl.

  If you want some reading material, my recommendation is:

  Unix System V: A Practical Guide
  by Mark G. Sobel

  (There is also a version for BSD)

  This is a outstanding overview of Unix including sh, ksh, and csh   programming; as well as good introductions to sed, awk, and regular   expressions. It also has chapters on emacs and vi ("Remember, vi is your   friend."). Amazon has the 3rd edition listed with a publish date of 1995.   So there probably is some rather outdated info in the book on stuff like   gopher, archie, possibly Mosaic (Oh heeeeey, cool!). Just ignore this. All   the other stuff is still completely relevant and presented in what I think   is the perfect level of detail -- not too verbose; not too terse -- with   good examples.

  Eventually, to get seriously cooking with sed and awk, you will need to get   something like the O'Reilly sed and awk book. But, for ksh programming: If   you work through the Bourne Shell and Korn Shell chapters of the Sobel book,   it is likely that this book is all you will ever need. Another wonderful   thing about this book is that it doesn't use the current trend of big fonts   with big margins and thick paper to create a monster sized book. Instead,   you get lots of information in a book that takes up little shelf space.
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  Author: Stephen Lee
    INET: Stephen.Lee_at_DTAG.Com

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  Author: Janardhana Babu Donga
    INET: jbdonga_at_ucdavis.edu
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Author: Les Ayudo
  INET: info_at_lesayudo.com

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Received on Tue Feb 18 2003 - 17:38:40 CST

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