## Bash, the language. Most books about Bash write about Bash as a Unix **utility**. Few books write about Bash as if it were a **programming language**. Writing books to **teach a programming language** is a somewhat **tried and true** technique of teaching readers. If you read an introductory book about **Java**, the outline of the book will be _very similar_ to an introductory book about **Python** or **C#** or most any other programming language. **The Adventurer's Guide to Bash** teaches Bash _like a programming language._ ## Opinionated This book, like all technical books, is full of **opinions.** These are [[About the Author|my]] **opinions**. There are a _lot of ways to write Bash programs._ If I tried to teach you _every possible way_ of writing a single line of Bash code, you would be overwhelmed with different possibilities. I use _consistent code_ throughout the book which teaches _my_ opinion of the "Best" way to write Bash code. ## Best Practices If you search for _"**Bash Best Practices**"_ what you'll find is a lot of inconsistent recommendations, mostly a mix of Bash and general Shell Scripting recommendations. Most general purpose programming languages have a _much more consistent_ set of well-known and used _"Best Practices."_ I have come up with my _own_ set of _"**Best Practices**"_ which I teach throughout this book, based on my over 15 years of professional software development. ## Dungeons & Dragons I enjoy the **fantasy** genre. If you don't enjoy (_or cannot tolerate_) reading about _Goblins_ and _Dragons_, then you will not enjoy this book. I initially named this book "**Beautiful Bash**" and wrote using generic terms, like using variables named `variable1` and `variable2`. It just felt a bit to *"dry"* for my taste. It was honestly really **boring**. So I updated the book and _now_ the code examples are about `dragons` and `goblins` and heroes! **I hope you enjoy it.** *I understand it's not for everyone.* --- _"Dungeons and Dragons" is trademark of Wizards of the Coast LLC._ _All fantasy content in this book comes from the Systems Reference Document (SRD) version 5.1 [^1]_ _The SRD material is released using the Open Gaming License (OGL) [^2] version 1.0a as found in the SRD 5.1 [^3]_ _Per Section 7 of the OGL, the following terms are designated Product Identity owned by Wizards of the Coast LLC: Dungeons & Dragons, Monster Manual, and more._ _The **only** reference to the term **"Dungeons & Dragons"**_ is here, in this page of the book. _The following are terms used in **The Adventurer's Guide to Bash** which bear similarity to terms owned by the Wizards of the Coast LLC: B&B, Basements & Beasts, Monster Manager. These are examples of **Parody** [^4] and are intended to be protected from copyright infringement as **Fair use** [^5]._ [^1]: https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/systems-reference-document-srd [^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Game_License [^3]: https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf [^4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Parody [^5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use