Class 1: Tuesday, January 28th

• Course Description
• This Course Requires Work
• Textbook
• Unix Account
• Course Work
• Software Needed for the Course
• Laptops
• Phones
• Attendance
• Recorded Class Meetings
• Course Documents
• Grading Policy
• Exams and Your Grade
• Late Work
• Email Notification
• Gradescope
• If You Fall Behind See Me
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
• Accommodations for Disabilities
• Classroom Behavior
• Academic Integrity
• Reputation
• Academic Honesty
• Honesty Expected In This Class
• What Happens If You Are Caught Cheating?
• Use of Artificial Intelligence Programs
• Class Discussion Area
• Class Assistant
• Making the Class Interesting
• Taking Notes
• The Most Important Thing to Learn in This Class
• Learn to Read Carefully
• Who Am I
• Do You Have Enough Time to Do the Work for This Course?
• Your Mental Health
• Getting Enough Sleep
• Office Hours
• Academic Support Programs
• Other UMB Services
• Contacting Me
• First Class Exercise
• First Homework Assignment

Class 2: Thursday, January 30th

• Opening Remarks
• Connecting to the Linux Machine from Home
• Operating Systems
• Components of the Operating System
• Unix
• Different Unix Releases
• GNU and the Free Software Foundation
• Linus Torvalds
• Linux Distributions
• Why is Linux So Popular?
• Ubuntu
• Shells
• Unix Commands
• Today's Class Exercise

Class 3: Tuesday, February 4th

• Some Skills Only Come With Work
• Class Exercises
• Getting Help
• Describing a Problem
• Don't Use Screenshots in Piazza
• The Command Line
• The Unix script Command
• The Editor Used in This Class
• The nano Text Editor
• Retrieving Your Last Command
• Correcting Mistakes on the Command Line
• Stopping a Running Program
• Using Options with Unix Commands
• Getting Help with Unix Commands
• The System Manual
• The info System
• Searching for a Keyword with apropos
• Getting Help from the Internet
• Homework Directories
• Using script in Homework 2

Class 4: Thursday, February 6th

• The putty Blank Screen Problem
• Use Flash Cards to Prepare for Graded Quizzes
• Always Check Your Work
• Special Characters
• Quoting and Escaping
• pwd - Show Your Current Directory
• cd - Change Directory
• ls - List the Contents of a Directory
• cat - Print the Contents of a File
• rm - Delete a File
• mkdir - Create a Directory
• rmdir - Delete a Directory
• cp - Copy Files
• mv - Move a File or Directory

Class 5: Tuesday, February 11th

• Importance of Exams
• Preparing for Exams
• Shell Scripts for Homework Assignments
• Scripts for Class Exercises
• Do Not Fall Behind in This Course
• Read the Homework Assignments Carefully
• Working with More than One Window
• Shell Scripts
• echo - Print Text to the Terminal
• hostname - Print the Name of Your Host Machine
• Pagers - View a File One Screen at a Time
• Pathname Completion
• grep - Finding Strings inside Files
• head - View the Top of a File
• tail - View the Bottom of a File
• sort - Print a File in Sorted Order

Class 6: Thursday, February 13th

• Shell Scripts for Homework Assignments
• Scripts for Class Exercises
• Copying and Pasting at the Command Line
• A Space in the Wrong Place
• Finding Errors in a Script
• The Shell Prompt
• Pipes - Stringing Programs Together
• uniq - Eliminate Duplicate Lines
• diff - Differences between Files
• file - Show the File Type
• date - Get the Date and Time
• wc - Counting characters
• which - Finding a Program File
• whereis - Finding Files Used by a Program
• locate - Search for Any File
• find - Search for Files Using Different Criteria
• who - See Users Logged On
• finger - Get information on Users

Class 7: Tuesday, February 18th

• Collecting and Testing Assignments
• Notifying You About Missing Work
• Late Work
• No Appointment Needed For Office Hours
• Checking Class Exercises
• An Easy Way to Create Homework Scripts
• Read the Specification
• Always Check Your Work
• Common Mistakes with Pipes
• Text File Conversion Programs
• Compressing Files with bzip2
• gzip - the GNU Compression Utility
• tar - Packaging Files for Transfer or Storage
• The Hierarchical Filesystem
• Unix Files and Directories
• Filenames
• Case Sensitivity
• Filename Extensions
• Current Directory
• Your Home Directory
• Navigating the Hierarchical File Systems

Class 8: Thursday, February 20th

• Be Sure You Know Where You Are
• Finding Errors in Homework Scripts
• Hidden Filenames
• Startup Files
• The . and . . Directory Entries
• Pathnames
• Absolute Pathnames
• Tilde, ~, in Pathnames
• Relative Pathnames
• Relative Pathnames in Your Current Directory
• Relative Pathnames in a Subdirectory
• Relative Pathnames above the Current Directory
• Relative Pathnames Neither above Nor below the Current Directory
• Standard Directories
• Your Home Directory versus /home
• The Two Uses of /
• The Two Special Uses of .

Class 9: Tuesday, February 25th

• Mistakes That Make Your Scripts Hard to Score
• Testing Your Class Exercises
• A Subtle Pathname Problem
• A Trick When Creating a Long Pathname
• Access Permissions
• Groups
• Viewing Access Permissions
• chmod
• Using chmod with Numeric Arguments
• chmod Practice

Class 10: Thursday, February 27th

• Using Pathnames
• Using a Pathname to Run a Script
• Practice with Access Permissions
• The root Account
• Directory Access Permissions
• Links
• The Two Types of Links
• ln
• Removing a Link
• Setuid and Setgid Permissions
• Setting Setuid and Setgid with chmod

Class 11: Tuesday, March 4th

• Getting Your First IT Job
• Keep In Contact
• Never Use . . in an Absolute Pathname
• Write Permissions on a Directory
• Using the ls Command
• The chmod Chant
• Using . When Copying a File
• Running a Unix Command
• Syntax of the Command Line
• Command Options
• Device Drivers
• tty
• The Unix tty Device Driver
• Parsing the Command Line
• The PATH System Variable
• Running a Program in the Current Directory
• Running the Command Entered on the Command Line
• Setgid Permission on Directories

Class 12: Thursday, March 6th

• Viewing Directory Permissions
• Using Computers More Efficiently
• Computers are Fast But People are Slow
• The Birth of Unix
• Data Streams
• The Monitor and Keyboard
• Standard Input, Standard Output and Standard Error
• The Keyboard and Screen as Standard Input and Standard Output
• Redirection
• Redirecting Standard Output
• Redirecting Standard Input
• Redirecting Standard Output Can Destroy a File
• Adding Output to an Existing File
• /dev/null
• Tricks with cat and Redirection
• Devices
• Unix Devices Are Files
• ssh and Pseudo-terminals

Class 13: Tuesday, March 11th

• Using chmod Twice to Change Permissions
• Pipes and Redirection
• Using ls to Construct a Long Pathname
• Running a Command in the Background
• Jobs
• Moving a Job from the Foreground into the Background
• Default Job
• Aborting a Background Job

Class 14: Thursday, March 13th

Class 16: Thursday, March 27th

• Killing All Running Jobs
• Seeing All Running Processes
• Pathname Expansion
• The ? Meta-character
• The * Meta-character
• The [ and ] Meta-characters
• Builtins
• Help for Builtins
• Ways a Shell Can Be Created
• The Login Shell
• Shells Created at the Command Line
• Shells Created to Run a Script
• Startup Files for This Class
• Different Shell Versions
• Using a Different Shell
• POSIX
• Shells for Running Scripts

Class 17: Tuesday, April 1st

• Running a Startup File after a Change has been Made
• Commands that are Symbols
• File Descriptors
• Redirecting Standard Error
• Shell Scripts
• Making a Shell Script Executable
• How Unix Runs a Program
• Running a Shell Script
• Specifying Which Shell Will Run a Script
• Comments in Shell Scripts

Class 18: Thursday, April 3rd

• Variables
• Creating a Variable
• Scope
• Local Variables
• Global Variables
• Choosing the Scope of a Variable
• Defining Global Variables
• Keyword Shell Variables
• Important Keyword Shell Variables
• User-created Variables
• The read command
• env - Show All Global Variables
• Separating and Grouping Commands
• | (pipe) and & (ampersand) as Command Separators
• Continuing a Command onto the Next Line
• Using Parentheses, ( ) , to Run a Group of Commands in a Subshell
• The Directory Stack
• pushd - Pushes a Directory onto the Stack
• popd - Pops a Directory off the Stack
• dirs - Displays the Directory Stack

Class 19: Tuesday, April 8th

• Don't Use Google for Homework Assignments
• Using Control Z with an Editor
• Redirecting Output From Background Job
• Positional and Special Parameters
• Quoting and the Evaluation of Variables
• Processes
• System Calls
• The History of Computer Languages
• Creating a New Process
• How the Shell Runs a Program
• Process Structure
• Booting a Unix Machine
• Process Identification

Class 20: Thursday, April 10th

• Seeing All Running Processes
• History
• Variables that Control the History Mechanism
• Using the History Mechanism
• Using fc to Edit and Run an Old Command
• The Readline Library
• Readline Completion
• Pathname Completion
• Command Completion
• Variable Completion
• Aliases
• Single Quotes Versus Double Quotes in Aliases
• Examples of Aliases
• Functions
• Where to Define Variables, Aliases and Functions

Class 21: Tuesday, April 15th

• Aliases Can Make Life Easier
• Bash Features and Options
• Processing the Command Line
• History Expansion
• Alias Substitution
• Brace Expansion
• Tilde, ~, Expansion
• Parameter and Variable Expansion
• Arithmetic Expansion
• Command Substitution
• Word Splitting
• Pathname Expansion
• Process Substitution

Class 22: Thursday, April 17th

• Shell Scripts
• Shell Script Control Structures
• The Problem With Unix if Statements
• The if ... then Construct
• Why Use Exit Status?
• test
• The test operators
• test Operators for Comparing Numbers
• test String Operators
• File and Directory Operators
• Logical Operators
• A Final Word on test

Class 23: Tuesday, April 22nd

• A Real World Script Example
• Another Way to run test
• The if ... then ... else ... Construct
• The if ... then ... elif ... Construct
• Exit
• Checking the Arguments to a Script
• Usage Messages
• Better Usage Messages Using basename
• Incremental Development
• Another Benefit of Incremental Development
• Debugging Scripts
• Indenting When Writing Scripts

Class 24: Thursday, April 24th

• Only One if ... elif ... else Clause Will Run
• for ... in ... Loops
• for Loops
• The Numeric for Loop
• while Loops
• until Loops
• continue
• break
• Real World for Loop Examples

Class 25: Tuesday, April 29th

• case Statement
• select Statement
• read Command
• An Interesting Use for the read Command
• Here Documents
• Using case and for in a Real World Script

Class 26: Thursday, May 1st

• Using Braces, { } , with Variables
• Special Parameters
• $ - The PID of the Current Shell Process
• ! - The PID of the Last Process Put into the Background
• ? - The Exit Status
• Positional Parameters
• # - The Number of Command Line Arguments
• 0 - The Pathname of the Script
• 1 - n - The Command Line Arguments
• Using { } With Positional Parameters
• * and @ - All the Command Line Arguments
• shift - Promotes Command Line Arguments
• set - Initialize Command Line Arguments
• A Practical Example of a Script Using set
• Array Variables

Class 27: Tuesday, May 6th

• The [[ ]] Command
• && and || as Command Separators
• Who Uses These Features?
• Limitations of grep
• Regular Expressions
• The Characters in Regular Expressions
• Ordinary Characters in Regular Expressions
• Meta-characters in Regular Expressions
• The . Meta-character
• The * Meta-character
• The + Meta-character
• The ? Meta-character
• The \ Meta-character
• Character Classes
• \d and \D Character Classes
• The \w and \W Character Classes
• The \s and \S Character Classes

Class 28: Thursday, May 8th