Full course description
Term: Spring 2026
Date: March 11th, 2026
Time: 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Location: Online Only
Instructor: Matthew Brown
Presented By: Advanced Research Computing (ARC)
Description:
Prerequisites:
- Knowledge of basic bash commands: cd, ls, pwd, mkdir, rmdir, rm, touch, cat, find, diff, echo.
- Knowledge of some text editor on ARC would be helpful.
Description:
Bash scripting can be used in almost any work where data files are used and need to be managed, created, and modified. Here, by “data files” we mean not only files containing measurements from experiments or observations, but also configuration files, computationally-generated numerical files, output files, tables, and other kinds of files. Shell commands, and utilities that are compatible with shells, can be used in isolation or combined to automate all sorts of operations on data, achieving improved efficiency, reproducibility, provenance, and fewer errors. This is Part 1 of a two-part sequence to cover a host of practical commands and operations.