[prog] Programming for QA folks

[Tricia Bowen]

Hi Anna,
I would start with 'Learning the Korn Shell'. I don't thing the version is
going to make a big difference for what your needs are going to be. I use my
books to get my feet wet on terminology and syntax, after that they are just
used for references. If I have a specific task that I need to do, I google
for script examples and I go from there. So you would google "shell scripts
for qa tasks linux" and play around with a few of the results that look
interesting to you.

I would advise starting small and simple. Keep a code library of interesting
scripts that you write or find on the web. Once you're comfortable you can
move on to perl or python.
--Tricia

On 6/15/07, Anna Baik <annaheyonbaik at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> Have been lurking on this list for a while, but not posting as I'm
> "not a programmer".  But recent posts have encouraged me to throw this
> one out to the list for advice!
>
> Could anyone suggest any good resources (either online or books) for
> shell scripting/Perl - especially if they're aimed specifically at QA
> folks?
>
> What I've looked at already: the OReilly books "Learning Perl" and
> "Learning the Korn Shell" - unfortunately the current version of
> "Learning the Korn Shell" is very definite about it being specifically
> for the 1993 version of the k shell, not the 88 version that is
> installed on our servers.  I do have access to an online version of
> the first edition though.  Those seem pretty good but I feel that the
> more examples of code I see the better I'll learn so would love to
> hear any other recommendations people might have.
>
> Background info: I'm a software tester working for a group who support
> a large "legacy" system in my company.   We'd really like to automate
> some of our regression testing and so we've been looking at learning
> shell scripting - specifically the Korn shell.  I guess Perl is the
> other option.  At the moment I can munge together really noddy little
> shell scripts to do simple things but it's nothing pretty, and I'd
> really like to be able to put together stuff that'll be  easily
> tweakable to accommodate changes by other folk, who may well be
> looking at stuff long after I've moved on.  So any general advice on
> good coding standards would be great!
>
> I'm not sure whether or to try learning Perl - I get the impression
> that although powerful it can be a bit hard to learn.  Also, I think
> (but am not sure) that it would be more likely that any future testers
> would already know shell scripting but might not know Perl - so that
> would also be a reason to write stuff in Korn shell.  On the other
> hand, I might be totally wrong and it might be *more* likely they'd
> know Perl, not less!
>
> cheers,
> Anna
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-- 
--Tricia