Bash Tutorial

Bash is the language of the Linux and macOS terminal. You type Bash commands to work with files, run programs and manage servers, and you can save those commands in a script to automate boring jobs.

Almost every web server in the world runs Linux, so Bash is a key skill for developers, system administrators and anyone working in the cloud.

Why Learn Bash?

• It lets you control a computer with text commands, fast
• You can automate tasks like backups, renaming files and deployments
• It is used on servers, in Docker, in CI pipelines and on Raspberry Pi
• It is already installed on Linux and macOS, and easy to get on Windows

What You Will Learn

• Opening a terminal and writing your first script
• Moving around folders and working with files
• Redirection, pipes and text tools such as grep and sort
• Variables, input, quoting and arithmetic
• Conditions with if and case
• for, while and until loops
• Functions and script arguments

A First Example

#!/bin/bash
name="Ayesha"
echo "Hello, $name! Today is a good day to learn Bash."

Hello, Ayesha! Today is a good day to learn Bash.

On Windows, install WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) or Git Bash to follow along.

Exercises and Quiz

Each lesson ends with a short exercise, and the last lesson is a quiz on everything.

What to Learn After Bash

With Bash you can manage servers and automate work. Next, try Go or Rust to build your own command-line tools, or Python for bigger automation scripts.