Looking for a good foothold to get you started with your BeOS scripting? Chris Herborth wrote an excellent chapter on Scripting for The BeOS Bible. While this chapter did not make it into print due to space limitations, it is available online at www.beosbible.com (you must own the book to access that part of the site). In addition, Herborth wrote a shorter but also excellent introductory piece for the former Be Magazine.
For something a little more hands-on, download TrackerBase — it’s packed with shell scripting tutorials, documentation, and re-usable code snippets.