About the Author

Sriranga Veeraraghavan works in the Enterprise Network Management group at Cisco Systems, Inc. He has several years of experience developing software in C, Java, Perl, and Bourne Shell and has contributed to several books, including UNIX Unleashed and Special Edition Using UNIX. Sriranga graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997 with a degree in engineering and is currently pursuing further studies at Stanford University. Among other interests, Sriranga enjoys mountain biking, classical music, and playing Marathon with his brother Srivathsa.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book on shell programming is a daunting task, due to the myriad of UNIX versions and shell versions that are available. Thanks to the work of my development editor Hugh Vandivier and my technical editor Aron Hsiao, I was able to make sure the book covered all the material completely and correctly. Their suggestions and comments have helped me enormously.

In addition to the technical side of the book, many things about the publishing process were new to me. Thanks to my acquisitions editor Gretchen Ganser and my executive editor Jeff Koch for handling all of the editorial issues and patiently working with me to keep this book on schedule. I would also like to thank Jane Brownlow who got me started on this project.

Working on a book takes a lot of time from work, as I found out. Thanks to the cooperation and understanding of my managers Pat Shriver and Larry Coryell, I was able to balance work and authoring. I know there is a thing called regular work, Pat. I’ll get to it soon. I promise.

I need to thank my parents; my brother, Srivathsa; and my aunt and uncle, Srinivasa and Suma; who put off family activities so that I could finish this book. I promise we’ll go to Lake Tahoe next year. Also thanks to my cousin’s wife, Katherine, who wanted to see her name in my book.

Thanks to everyone else on the excellent team at Sams who worked on this book. Without their support, this book would not exist.

Dedication

For my grandmother, who taught me to love the English language.

For my mother, who taught me to love programming languages.

Tell Us What You Think!

As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your opinion and want to know what we’re doing right, what we could do better, what areas you’d like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you’re willing to pass our way.

As an executive editor for the Operating Systems team at Macmillan Computer Publishing, I welcome your comments. You can fax, email, or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn’t like about this book—as well as what we can do to make our books stronger.

Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book, and that due to the high volume of mail I receive, I might not be able to reply to every message.

When you write, please be sure to include this book’s title and author as well as your name and phone or fax number. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book.