Linux Shell Scripting - Advanced

Updated in May 2025. This course now features Coursera Coach! A smarter way to learn with interactive, real-time conversations that help you test your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and deepen your understanding as you progress through the course. In this course, you will learn how to enhance your shell scripting skills with advanced techniques that will empower you to write powerful and efficient scripts. You’ll master functions, libraries, graphical scripting, and the use of advanced tools like sed, awk, and Regular Expressions (RegEx) to manipulate data and automate complex tasks. The course starts by introducing you to functions and libraries in bash scripting, where you'll learn how to create reusable code and modularize your scripts. You will explore local vs. global variables, and how to return values from functions to make your scripts more dynamic. Then, we dive deep into sed and awk, two critical tools for text processing and data manipulation. From basic substitution to complex multi-line edits, you will become proficient in using these tools to handle text data with precision. Next, we cover the power of Regular Expressions (RegEx) for pattern matching and text transformation. This section will equip you with the ability to build advanced search and replace operations, making your scripts highly flexible and efficient. You will then delve into graphical user interface (GUI) scripting, learning how to create interactive scripts that engage users with text-based or graphical menus. The course is aimed at intermediate to advanced learners who are already familiar with basic shell scripting. It will benefit system administrators, developers, and anyone looking to enhance their scripting capabilities. No prior experience with GUI scripting or advanced sed/awk is required, but a solid understanding of bash scripting fundamentals is recommended.