bash

Henning Schulzrinne Department of Computer Science Columbia University

10-Jan-14 Advanced Programming Spring 2002

Shells
Each OS has one, but different levels of sophistication
Windows Command Prompt sh original /bin/sh
bash Bourne-Again Shell, derived from sh ksh Korn shell = superset of sh

csh shell with C-like syntax

tcsh improved version of csh

...
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sh, bash the first scripting language

shell = macro processor that executes commands invokes Unix commands and has its own set of commands full programming language sources of input:
from terminal files with sh commands can become commands (=/ C, Java)
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sh
Shell is just another program:
while (1) { read line from terminal; parse into words; substitute variables; execute commands (execv or builtin); }

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Advanced Programming Spring 2002

(ba)sh
both synchronous and asynchronous execution
synchronous: wait for completion in parallel with shell

control stdin, stdout, stderr set environment for processes (using inheritance between processes) set default directory builtins:
cd, break, continue, exec, ... convenience: history, getopts, kill, pwd
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sh
Language:
variables flow-control constructs functions

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(ba)sh operation
1. read input from file, from c command line string or terminal 2. break input into words and operators; alias expansion 3. simple and compound commands 4. shell expansions (variables, glob, ...) 5. perform redirections 6. execute command 7. optionally wait for command to complete
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Quoting and comments

something: preserve literally something: allow $ variable expansion $C-escaped: e.g., $\a # comment

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Simple commands and pipelines

Simple command = sequence of words
first word defines command can combine with &&, ||, ;, etc.

Pipeline = sequence of command | command | ...

each command reads previous command output

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List of commands
cmd1; cmd2; ...: execute sequentially cmd1 & : execute asynchronously cmd1 && cmd2 ...: execute cmd2 if cmd1 has exit(0) cmd1 || cmd2 : execute cmd2 only if cmd1 has non-zero exit status

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Variables and expressions

Variables are placeholders for the value shell does variable substitution $var or ${var} is value of variable assignment with var=value
no space before or after! Also, let x = 17 or let b = b + 10

uninitialized variables have no value variables are untyped, interpreted based on context
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Environment variables
Shell variables are generally not visible to programs Environment = list of name/value pairs passed to sub-processes All environment variables are also shell variables, but not vice versa Make variables visible to processes with export, as in export foo export foo=17 Show with env
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Shell variables
${N} = shell Nth parameter $$ = process ID $? = exit status standard environment variables include:

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HOME = home directory PATH = list of directories to search TERM = type of terminal (vt100, ...) TZ = timezone (e.g., US/Eastern)
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Looping constructs
Similar to C/Java constructs, but with commands:
until test-commands; do consequentcommands; done while test-commands; do consequentcommands; done for name [in words ...]; do commands; done

also on separate lines break and continue controls loop

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while example
shell style
i=0 while [ $i -lt 10 ]; do echo "i=$i" ((i=$i+1)) done

C style
((i = 0)) while (( i < 10 )) do echo "i=$i" ((i++)) done

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sh: if
if test-commands; then

consequent-commands; [elif more-test-commands; then more-consequents;] [else alternate-consequents;]

fi

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Functions
Very limited support for functions:
function useless() { echo "First $1 echo "Second $2" echo "Third $3" echo "Fourth $4 }

useless a b c
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Scripts
Binaries and scripts are treated the same Make executable (chmod u+x) and add
#! /usr/local/gnu/bin/bash

More generically:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

Also,
. script source script
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Expansion
Biggest difference to traditional languages
shell substitutes and executes mix variables and code run-time code generation

For bash:

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brace expansion tilde expansion parameter and variable expansion command substitution arithmetic expansion word splitting filename expansion
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Brace expansion
Expand comma-separated list of strings into separate words:
bash$ echo a{d,c,b}e ade ace abe

Useful for generating list of filenames:

mkdir /usr/local/{old,new,dist,bugs}

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Tilde expansion
~ expands to $HOME e.g.,
~/foo /usr/home/foo ~hgs/src /home/hgs/src

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Command substitution
Replace $(command) or `command` by stdout of executing command Can use to execute content of variables:
x=ls echo `ls`

Danger!

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Filename expansion
Any word containing *?([ is considered a pattern * matches any string ? matches any single character [...] matches any of the enclosed characters

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Redirections
stdin, stdout and stderr may be redirected < redirects stdin (0) from file > redirects stdout (1) to file >> appends stdout to file &> redirects stderr (2) << magic

here-document
magic
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