Documentaion on Bash

Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, that will appear in the GNU operating system. Bash is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and C shell (csh). It is intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.2 Shell and Tools standard. It offers functional improvements over sh for both programming and interactive use. In addition, most sh scripts can be run by Bash without modification.

The Advanced Bash Scripting Guide is both a reference and a tutorial on shell scripting. This comprehensive book (the equivalent of about 512 print pages) covers almost every aspect of shell scripting. It contains 257 profusely commented illustrative examples, and a number of tables.

Since v2.04, bash has allowed you to intelligently program and extend its standard completion behavior to achieve complex command lines with just a few keystrokes. Imagine typing ssh [Tab] and being able to complete on hosts from your ~/.ssh/known_hosts files. Or typing man 3 str [Tab] and getting a list of all string handling functions in the UNIX manual. mount system: [Tab] would complete on all exported file-systems from the host called system, while make [Tab] would complete on all targets in Makefile. This project was conceived to produce programmable completion routines for the most common Linux/UNIX commands, reducing the amount of typing sysadmins and programmers need to do on a daily basis.

Bashish is a theme-engine using bash and other POSIX shells to customize nearly all aspects of the terminal: title, colors, prompt, font, background, etc. It has a modular design which makes it easy to add features (and it does have a lot) while keeping good performance.

The Bash Debugger Project contains patched sources to BASH that enable better debugging support as well as improved error reporting. In addition, this project contains the most comprehensive source-code debugger for bash that has been written.