Shell Scripting for Dummies

Is there such a book?

I've never took scripting seriously, nor bothered learning it, I had plenty of reasons for this. I've never grasped dynamic typing, I can only think in statically typed languages, and dynamically typed languages are a nightmare from my past experiences. I don't like interpreted languages, either, which is mostly the case for dynamically typed languages, for some reason, if it doesn't generate a binary, I can't get myself into thinking that it'll work, or is working. Java was an exception because it generates a bytecode that could be bundled in JAR files.

Anyway now though I found myself in need of writing shell scripts to automate repetitive and boring tasks. It can't be too hard, I just need to be more flexible, think dynamically, and comfortable with operators like | and >, i.e PIPE and REDIRECT.

The question is what shell scripting language to learn? There are plenty of them, on Unix and Unix-like OSes and then there are some cross-platform like Perl, though Perl is much more than just a scripting language.

I'm inclined towards spending time getting fluent in BASH, it is standard on most Unix and Unix-like OSes as part of the GNU Utilities. There are various ports of BASH to Windows as well.

Microsoft now has the PowerShell, which is really great for admins and people doing boring repetitive tasks at work, like me. More specifically Windows admins and people doing boring repetitive tasks at work, like me. It uses the .Net framework and is supposed to be just right for Windows, since a lot of Windows Server software from Microsoft now has PowerShell scripting frontend.

I came across a BASH tutorial, and there a lot of them if you just search for "BASH tutorial", it doesn't seem to horrifying, in an odd way I think I like it.