Wicked Cool Shell Scripts reviewed by Robert Pritchett 

Author: Dave Taylor 

taylor@intuitive.com

http://www.intuitive.com

Interview: 

http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1375/transcript_taylordave_scripts050208/

No Starch Press 

http://www.nostarch.com

Booksite: 

http://www.nostarch.com/wcss.htm

Released: January 2004 

Pages: 368 

$30 USD, $44 CND,   23 GBP,   26.50 Euro 

ISBN: 1593270127 

Oopsies: 

http://www.intuitive.com/wicked/errata.shtml

For Advanced Scripters, or scripter wannabees. 

Strengths: Cross platform knowledgebase. 

Weaknesses: Check out the Oopsies link. 

Wicked Cool Shell Scripts by Dave Taylor is a hands on book. Not really a tutorial, but more of a 

cross platform scripting cookbook. Dave Taylor appears to be happy working Linux, Mac OS X 

and UNIX and provides no less than 101 scripts to do the job. The scripts may not be exactly the 

best way to do a job, but they are ant least one way. If you are into Perl, than this book may not 

be for you. If you have not gotten into Perl yet, than this book is for you and will at least get you 

into the ballpark, even if it doesn't exactly let you make a home run with every instance. But 

hitting a home run with every swing takes practice and so does scripting.  

The other book I reviewed by Dave Taylor  (Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger) kept referring 

back to this book, so I decided to request Wicked Cool Shell Scripts for review.  

Dave Taylor dedicates one whole chapter (about 16 pages) to Mac Scripting (Chapter 11). He 

also enjoys using the Bourne Shell. 

  MPN, LLC 2005 macCompanion 

Page 57 

August 2005, Volume 3 Issue 8