Welcome to the introduction to the Unix Shell. This course does not require any prior knowledge of Shell.

Since we will be using GitHub and GitHub Skills templates, I strongly suggest completing two GitHub skills courses:

• Introduction to GitHub
• Code with Codespace (the first step is enough for this course)

In this course you will:

• practice using GitHub and GitHub Skills templates
• learn basic information about Shell
• practice using most useful Shell commands
• practice using loops, pipelines and filters
• practice writing shell scripts

The entire course will have 4 parts/weeks, each part will have multiple sections that will require reading short text or specific section from the external sources, watching a short video or practicing your knowledge in hands-on activities. Every week should take no more than 1--2, hours and significantly less if you have prior experience.

The topics covered in four weeks:

• Week 1:
  • What is Shell?
  • Working with GitHub and Codespace.
  • Exercise 1: Practicing using shell commands.
  • Exercise 2: Creating new files.
• Week 2:
  • More about Shell.
  • Week 1 review.
  • Working with files content.
  • Practice using new commands.
  • Exercise 1: Merging content of the files.
  • Exercise 2: Using Pipes to work with file content.
• Week 3:
  • Week 2 review.
  • For loops and simple scripts.
  • Exercise 1: Using loops.
  • Creating a script.
  • Exercise 2: Creating a script with an input.
• Week 4:
  • Week 3 review.
  • Searching and editing files.
  • Exercise 1: Creating a script to search files.
  • Environmental Variables.

This course is a part of the Best practices for reproducibility and testing in scientific software series, created for the Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellowship project.

1. Right-click Start course and open the link in a new tab.
2. In the new tab, most of the prompts will automatically fill in for you.
   • For owner, choose your personal account or an organization to host the repository.
   • We recommend creating a public repository, as private repositories will use Actions minutes.
   • Scroll down and click the Create repository button at the bottom of the form.
3. After your new repository is created, wait about 20 seconds, then refresh the page. Follow the step-by-step instructions in the new repository's README.

Get help: Submit an issue

Acknowledgment: This work was supported by the Better Scientific Software Fellowship Program, a collaborative effort of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Advanced Scientific Research via ANL under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357 and the National Nuclear Security Administration Advanced Simulation and Computing Program via LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344; and by the National Science Foundation (NSF) via SHI under Grant No. 2327079.