# Article about FreeBSD scripting



## BSDMag_org (Jun 1, 2013)

Hello,

I am from BSDMag.org. It is a monthly downloadable magazine devoted to all *BSD operating systems. I am looking for someone who would agree to contribute an article on programming/scripting under this OS.

Is anyone willing to write such an article?

Regards,
Kamil


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## fonz (Jun 1, 2013)

BSDMag_org said:
			
		

> an article on programming/scripting under this OS.


That sounds rather broad, you may want to be a bit more specific.


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## BSDMag_org (Jun 3, 2013)

More specifically, I am looking for an article talking about "grep", "locate", "whereis", "find" and other search tools available under *BSD. Also, it should tell a little bit about pipelines used in connection with these scripts.


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## fluca1978 (Jun 3, 2013)

Allow me to get into more details, since I'm one of the magazine assistant editors.

What we are looking for is one (or more) articles on the usage of the common file text utility commands, such as grep(1), sed(1), awk(1) and friends, as well as other utilities that come along like find(1), locate(1) and others.

Now, while the main focus should be on text processing from the command line, the subject can be expanded to some tutorials and howtos regarding the pipelining of commands and the _scripting_, that is constructing complex commands using basic bricks. For instance, it could be interesting to have a tutorial on how to build a medium-to-complex script in different shell environments (e.g., sh,ksh,zsh) so to take advantage of every specific shell features.

With regard to the article itself, usually the deadline for presenting an article is around the 25 of each month to get a chance to be published on the next-month issue, but of course it is possible to get it published on a more relaxed schedule. Consider that each paper has to be reviewed by the magazine betatesters, and suggested improvements have to be applied before it can be included into a specific issue.

If anyone is interested in contributing to the magazine, please contact me via private message or contact _BSDMag_org_ and we will provide more detailed information.


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## segfault (Jun 3, 2013)

Always enjoy this magazine and look forward to the article on scripting!


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## tmw (Jun 3, 2013)

Hi,

I also enjoy reading this magazine. I like the idea of article describing advantages of some specific shells but (sorry) there are a lot of articles about `grep`, `sed` and I'm not sure whether we will bring something new (but I hope I'm wrong ).

Maybe a good idea will be to write some article about libraries specific to FreeBSD like libutil? How functions in libutil are used in the tools like procstat and so on. Describe functions like kvm_open(3), kvm_getprocs(3). Create maybe a set of articles about those things, and someone after reading this material will be able to write its own `top` or `procstat`. 

How do you like my idea?


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## fluca1978 (Jun 4, 2013)

tmw said:
			
		

> Hi,
> 
> I also enjoy reading this magazine. I like the idea of article describing advantages of some specific shells but (sorry) there are a lot of articles about `grep`, `sed` and I'm not sure whether we will bring something new (but I hope I'm wrong ).



You are right, but the fact that there are so many articles does not need that readers have found them or know everything about the above commands. Of course, one of the goal of any author (in any field) is to provide some new and blinking content, so it could also mean, in this particular case, to provide a _grep-ninja_ article 




			
				tmw said:
			
		

> Maybe a good idea will be to write some article about libraries specific to FreeBSD like libutil? How functions in libutil are used in the tools like procstat and so on. Describe functions like kvm_open(3), kvm_getprocs(3). Create maybe a set of articles about those things, and someone after reading this material will be able to write its own `top` or `procstat`.
> 
> How do you like my idea?



I personally like it, so if anyone has enough time, skills and wants to start writing one or more articles on c-libraries please contact me. By the way, BSD Magazine is quite open in the content, so if you believe there is a specific feature/tool/configuration/utility/library/command that should be explained to the world feel free to write a paper!


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