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<h1 style='text-align: center;'>Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide</h1>

<h2>About</h2>

<p>(TODO: A more sophisticated introductional paragraph
here)</p>

<p>The <i>Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide</i> is a book written by
<b>Mendel Cooper</b> and part of The Linux Documentation Project, page
<a href='https://www.tldp.org/guides.html'>Guides</a>. <b>This is a
fork</b> of the original work which itself had been (since 2014)
dedicated to the <b>Public Domain</b>.</p>

<h2>Web</h2>

<p>To read in a <b>browser</b>, follow the link <a
href='../bash-scripting-guide'>Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide</a><p>

<p>For <b>off-line viewing</b> download and unpack: <span
style='color: gray; cursor: pointer;' title='Not ready
yet'>bash-scripting-guide.zip</span> (TODO)</p>

<h3>Web fonts</h3>

<p>The HTML styling sets <code>font-family:
serif/sans-serif/monospace</code> <b>without</b> any specific <b>font
names</b>, <code>font-size:</code> is set in units of <i>em</i>, the
main size is <i>1 em</i>.<p>

<p>This approach respects the font name and font size <b>settings of
the browser</b>, it adapts across monitor sizes and pixel resolutions.</p>

<h2>GNU Info format</h2>

<h3>Viewer</h3>

<p><b>What</b> is GNU Info?</p>

<p>GNU Info is a help viewer that operates in a <b>hypertext
format</b> for easy navigation of multi-page documentation. It is
useful in the conditions of a terminal session.</p>

<p><b>Example</b> page from the book displayed in Info:</p>

<pre style='background: linen; font-size: 80%;'>
Next: Special Characters,  Prev: Invoking the script,  Up: Top

6 Special chars, variables
**************************

Together with the &quot;keywords&quot;, the &quot;special characters&quot; and the
&quot;variables&quot; are the building block of scripts.

   _Special characters_ have meta-meaning.  _Variables_ are how
programming and scripting languages represent data.

* Menu:

<span style="background-color:#C4A000"><font color="#300A24">* Special Characters</font></span>::  Special Characters
<font color="#729FCF"><b>* Variable Substitution</b></font>::       Retrieving values of variables
<font color="#729FCF"><b>* Variable Assignment</b></font>:: The assignment operator
<font color="#729FCF"><b>* Untyped variables</b></font>::   Bash Variables Are Untyped
<font color="#729FCF"><b>* Variable Types</b></font>::      Special Variable Types




<span style="background-color:#FFFFFF"><font color="#300A24">-----Info: (bash-scripting-guide)Basics, 19 lines --All-------------------------</font></span>

</pre>

<p><b>Enable colors</b> in Info</p>

<p>The default configuration of Info in the terminal might be too
austere, for easier visual navigation it can be configured to display
the hypertext links with colors</p>

<pre>
$ info -v link-style=blue -v active-link-style=yellow -f bash-scripting-guide.info
</pre>

To set permanently create a config like this:

<pre>
$ cat ~/.infokey
#var
link-style=blue,bold
active-link-style=yellow,standout
match-style=bold
</pre>

<h3>Download and Install</h3>

<p>Your OS already comes with documentation in Info format, it resides
in <code>/usr/share/info</code>.<p>

<p>Common convention for all <b>external manuals</b> would be to be
kept in <b>a separate directory</b>, for example
<code>~/.local/share/info</code>. There a special file, named
<code>dir</code>, lists the documentation installed in it. To add to it
invoke <code>install-info</code>.</p>

<p>Download via URL:
<a href='bash-scripting-guide.info'>bash-scripting-guide.info</a>
(1.6M) in a browser of via <code>wget</code></p>

<pre>
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/info
$ cd ~/.local/share/info
$ wget https://hangar118.sdf.org/p/bash-scripting-guide-home/bash-scripting-guide.info
$ install-info --add-once bash-scripting-guide.info dir
</pre>

To inform Info about the custom folder, invoke via option
<code>--dir</code>

<pre>
$ info --dir ~/.local/share/info
</pre>

Or set <code>INFOPATH</code>

<pre>
$ export INFOPATH=~/.local/share/info
</pre>

To go directly to the manual bypassing the Dir page of Info do:

<pre>
$ info -f bash-scripting-guide
</pre>

<h3>Emacs</h3>

<p><b>Emacs</b> has a <b>built-in viewer</b> of Info documentation,
the Info directory is shared between Emacs and the standalone GNU Info
reader.</p>

To make this custom directory available to Emacs add this snippet to
your <code>init.el</code>:

<pre>
(add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "~/.local/share/info")
</pre>

<h3>Resources on GNU Info</h3>

<ul>
<li>
Official <a href='https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/'>project page</a> of GNU Info
</li>
<li>
<a href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Info_(Unix)'>Page</a> on Wikipedia
</li>
<li>
Other <a
href='https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ExternalDocumentation'>documentation
in Info</a> format available for download and install
</li>
</ul>

<h2>Contribute</h2>

The book is a cooperatively developed project on GitHub, contributions
are <b>welcome</b>:

<a href='https://github.com/pmarinov/bash-scripting-guide'>
https://github.com/pmarinov/bash-scripting-guide
</a>

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<small>
Contents of this page is public domain
<a rel="license"
  href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">
  (CC0)</a>
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