Skip to Content
Navigation:

A stick figure smiling

Here's a preview from my zine, Bite Size Bash!! If you want to see more comics like this, sign up for my saturday comics newsletter or browse more comics!

Image of a comic. To read the full HTML alt text, click "read the transcript".

browse more comics! get the zine!
read the transcript!

it’s SO easy to get started

Here’s how:

  1. Make a file called hello.sh and put some commands in it, like ls /tmp
  2. Run it with bash hello.sh

pipes & redirects are super easy

managing pipes in other languages is annoying. in bash, it’s just: cmd1 | cmd2

batch file operations are easy

smiling stick figure with curly hair: let’s convert every .png to a .jpg bash, with hearts in its eyes: I was born for this

it’s surprisingly good at concurrency

smiling stick figure with curly hair: let’s start 12 programs in parallel & wait for them all to finish bash: yep no problem!

it doesn’t change

bash is weird and old, but the basics of how it works haven’t changed in 30 years. If you learn it now, it’ll be the same in 10 years.

bash is GREAT for some tasks

But it’s also EXTREMELY BAD at a lot of things. I don’t use bash if I need: * unit tests * math (bash barely has numbers!) * easy-to-read code ☺

Saturday Morning Comics!

Want another comic like this in your email every Saturday? Sign up here!

I'll send you one of my favourite comics from my archives every Saturday.
© Julia Evans 2024 | All rights reserved (see the FAQ for notes about licensing)