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A very boring, but instructive way is to read manuals cover to cover - for example the GNU Coreutils one [0]. This way, you become aware of the existence of a lot of tools (such as comm, which is part of the coreutils), and while reading you'll realize that some of them might be a better way of doing things than how you're doing them currently.

Other boring, but instructive reads (heavily GNU biased): diffutils [1], findutils [2], the Bash manual [3].

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual

[2]: https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/find.html

[3]: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual



The chapter on shell utilities in the POSIX standard is another goldmine!


I'd also recommend Unix Power Tools. There's definitely some outdated content, but I learned a lot about shell usage and text manipulation from it.

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596003302.do


Seconded. The dead tree copy I purchased in the mid-2000s is the best technical book in my collection. I’ve read most of it and every so often I still dip in to learn something new or – more often than not – to re-learn something I’ve forgotten.




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