unix

ksh is the shell of my choice, thus I was anxious to read "the" book co-authored by David Korn himself.

Clearly, it is the canonical reference for the Korn Shell Language. Every single feature and obscurity of ksh is described here.

However, the book is not in the least an enjoyable read, nor is it of use for people who, like me, prefer a book with lots of practical code examples, rather than dry text only.

The typesetting quality is very poor. The text looks like a 300k ASCII file printed out. For example, I believe this is the only technical book I know of that doesn't use any tables (!). These things (among others) make it very hard to come back to certain information while writing your scripts. All in all, a much clearer visual structuring would be desirable.

There are way too few programming examples (many of which are quite obscure). If you are looking for those small and practical code snipplets for "everyday use", pick up the ksh93 book by Barry Rosenberg instead of this one!

I make my living writing Korn shell, and of all the books on Korn, this is the one I could least do without.

Pros: I've known people to buy this book simply for its back cover, as the index of topics on the back is enough to dig up information on the topics covered. The book is dense, not a tutorial really, more a reference text for ksh related topics. This is a book to be read on an as-needed basis, a cookbook for the "how do I get -this- to work!?" crowd.

Cons: I don't recommend it as anyone's first programming book. Even for the systems administrator, I'd recommend Nemeth et al. and Aeleen Frisch's books on administration as supplements for Unix related topics. There are essential things about shells and shell scripting (statically linked versus dynamically linked shells) that will never be learned in a shell programming book, that are critical to knowing when and where a shell language can be used.

I have been using this book in my shell scripting classes for
about seven years now. I still find it to be the best
reference. One of the many things I like about it is that it
clearly identifies ksh88 and newer (e.g., ksh93) features. It
does not address pdksh, found on many Linux systems as /bin/ksh,
but you can get real AT&T ksh93 for free so why use pdksh? My
only complaint is that the book is rather long in the tooth
(1995) and there are a lot of new features in ksh93-k+ let alone
ksh93-o (the current release). A new edition is overdue.

In the same shell scripting class, I teach ksh93, nawk, sed, and
expect. I find, with this book, the students can do everything
they might have done in nawk or sed in straight ksh93. Other
ksh books do not, in my experience, give the students the
information necessary that they can do that.