We've gone over some of the most important techniques in good use of Bash shell script, with particular emphasis on keeping things small, simple, and robust. With all we've learned, however, we've still only just scratched the surface.
As we mentioned in the first few chapters, because Bash is largely designed to run other programs and make them work together—sometimes in novel ways the authors of those programs could never have imagined—we could fill a book this size many times over just with various tips and tricks for elegant shell script programming for many of our favourite commands.
We hope that this short book has given you a running start in becoming an expert shell script user, and helped you begin to appreciate the power and flexibility that knowledgeable use of the Bash shell offers you. Your author believes that mastering some form of command shell is one of the best decisions a programmer or systems administrator can make, and Bash is a great choice. It provides amazing possibilities for writing powerful programs very quickly in only a few lines, and automating boring or error-prone jobs to make your work more productive, satisfying, challenging, and—maybe best of all—more fun.