A simple-to-hard step by step shell scripting tutorial

By: Elnaz Amanzadeh

Contents
A simple-to-hard step by step shell scripting tutorial...................................................................................1
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Exercise 1: “read” & “touch”...................................................................................................................5
Exercise 2: Difference between “touch” and “cat” commands:...............................................................5
Exercise 3: For Loops- A simple One.....................................................................................................6
Exercise 4: for loop- Part 2......................................................................................................................7
Exercise 5: While looping.......................................................................................................................8
Exercise 6: “grep”....................................................................................................................................9
Exercise7: “if .. else statement”.............................................................................................................10
Exercise 8: Multiple if statements..........................................................................................................11
Exercise 8: sed.......................................................................................................................................13
Exercise 10: “sed” command- part2......................................................................................................14
Exercise 11: “awk” command................................................................................................................16
Exercise 12: “awk”- Part2.....................................................................................................................17

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Introduction

For beginners in Linux systems, shell scripting seems unfamiliar. Normally, they may ask about
the necessity and advantages of shell scripting. As a short answer, shell scripting is a simple way
to achieve reproducibility for all actions in Linux system. Simply, you may download some files
into a specified folder. After a while, you don’t know where is that file, and if you are using only
terminal, it will be a time consuming process to find the file. In more complex activities, same
thing is true. In addition, everything is performed using command lines in Linux system, but you
don’t want to retype complex and long commands every time you need to use them. You always
will need a shell script as a background.

How to create and open a shell script?

Normally, after starting your Linux system, press [Alt+Ctrl+t] to open a new terminal. I want to
direct you to Desktop directory and create shell script file there.
For this, type [cd Desktop]. Now, you are in Desktop directory.
Now, check your Desktop. Make sure that the name you are selecting for your script doesn’t
already exist: [ls]
And, create your shell script: [cat > Shell1.sh]
Check your Desktop again: [ls]. File, Shell1.sh should be there.
Type; [gedit shell1.sh]. Like its name, shell script is a platform that you can type everything you
want to execute later. Therefore, you will need a program to open your script and make any
change you want. Such programs are called text editors. Sublime Text, Atom, Vim, Gedit, Nano,
GNU Emacs, etc (You can obtain more information about text editors in https://fossbytes.com/9-
best-text-editors-linux-programming-2017/).
Let’s get back to our script.

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First of all, if you want to make your script executable, you should tell this to your system by
typing [#! /bin/bash].

Before starting to write please note that a shell script should be as readable as possible and no
unnecessary commands should be used. Because when you aim to write a complex shell script
with several commands following each other and there were some errors, not only yourself but
also other people should people to understand it and correct it or make any change in it.
Let’s begin with a cliché! We want to say Hello to World. In nest lines, type [echo ”Hello
World”]
Get back to your terminal and type [./Shell1.sh]
There is an error about Permission. To be sure that you want to execute this script, you should
type [chmod +x Shell1.sh]. Now execute your script again. you will see this:

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Therefore, use [echo] any time you want to print any phrase which it comes before. How about
giving a name for everything want to execute? It will be helpful for calling the same directory in
a script for several times. Let’s do this. Open your script. I you want save your first command
and also not execute it every time you run ./Shell1.sh, just put a # before it. Hashtag will change
every line you point to a comment.
Now, go to the next line and type:
First="Hello World"
echo $First
When you run your script using terminal, it will show the same result as last command. There is
a point here. Try the same script without $ sign. Using this sign turns the term into a variable
which has been introduced before in the shell.

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Exercise 1: “read” & “touch”

This command lest you to have interactions with users. Open your script and type:
echo “What is your name?”
read USER_NAME
echo “Hello $USER_NAME”
echo “I will create a file for you called ${USER_NAME}_file”
touch ${USER_NAME}_file
I am sure that you know application of read and touch commands but if you don’t know just
check your Desktop directory. “read” is a built in function and reads a line, while touch helps
you to create your favorite files.
You will probably ask what is the difference between cat and touch commands. To receive your
answer, perform Exercise 2.

Exercise 2: Difference between “touch” and “cat” commands:

Please run following commands and you will find out:

$ls -l file3
$cat file3
$cat > file3
hi
$cat file3
$cat >> file3
hihi
$cat file3
Principally, you won’t be able to run more than two above lines with touch. Please try it and find
differences.

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Exercise 3: For Loops- A simple One

For Loops are considered as one of the most used commands. They simply many actions in script
for us. Don’t wait. Just run the following:
for i in 1 2 3 4 5
do
echo "Looping ... number $i"
done
As you can see, “do” and “done” are important because they direct initiation and end of a loop.
If you want to writ line 2 and line 3 in the same line, just put a (;) immediately after do and write
the next line.

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Exercise 4: for loop- Part 2

If you have a string, you should check whether you have defined all details true or not. Please
run the following script:
for i in hello 1 /”*” 2 goodbye
do
echo "Looping ... i is set to $i"
done
Everything seems normal. Now, try it again with no “” around *. Here is the difference in results:

Note: * means all. You can use this parameter to point all variables or all files in a special
format. Therefore, it is a very useful parameter but you should know where it should be in quotes
and where shouldn’t.

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Exercise 5: While looping

While loop is another type of loops which acts like for loop. You also can detect the difference
between them by a simple exercise which can you see it and other examples in
(https://www.shellscript.sh/loops.html):
INPUT_STRING=hello
while [ "$INPUT_STRING" != "bye" ]
do
echo "Please type something in (bye to quit)"
read INPUT_STRING
echo "You typed: $INPUT_STRING"
done

You can continue a while loop until you type “bye” word.

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Exercise 6: “grep”

Similarly, you can also use all mentioned commands in one script. For example, you can run
this:
cd ~/Desktop
My_String=Eli
for i in *.txt
do
cat $i | grep $My_String
done
You can see the results as below:

This is also a review on what you can do with what you have learned until here. In this exercise,
(*) has been used to point all the text files you have created in Desktop directory. Two
commands of (cat) and (grep) have also been in the same line and separated by a (|). In many
scripts, you need to write several commands in a tandem way. Therefore, you will need to use
“and”. By this way, not only the script will be simpler and more understandable, also reduced the
number of probable errors. In order to do this, first option is the use of (|). The second option is
the use of (&&) which is often used in (if) statements to determine two conditions with one (if)
statement.
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**For grep commands: https://bencane.com/2013/08/19/grepping-a-file-without-using-cat-and-
grep-other-tricks/
**For cat and grep and awk: http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_shell_text_processing.html

Exercise7: “if .. else statement”

An important condition maker in shell scripting is “if .. else statement”. Using it, you can
determine your favorite or required ranges. Let’s run this script:
echo "Please guess the number of cars: "
read X
if [ "$X" -le "100" ]; then
echo "Sorry, not correct"
else
echo "You entered the magic number!"
fi

Result:

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Like “for” loops, if .. else statements should have accurate start and end. It is ended by “fi”. You
should use “fi” as many as “if”s you are using in your script. In this example, “le” is used to say
if $X is less than 100 or equal to 100 it is not correct. “else” means any integer more than 100.
You can determine several conditions for any file or database you have and finally obtain your
favorite results.
There are other options to determine the range in a script:
lt(a, b): a < (less than) b
le(a, b): a < (less or equal) b
eq(a, b): a = (equal) b
ne(a, b): a != (not equal) b
gt(a, b): a > (greater than) b
ge(a, b): a > (greater or equal) b.
**For “if .. else statements”: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix/if-else-statement.htm

Exercise 8: Multiple if statements

Run the following script several times and each time enter a different value. You will find out how it
works and it will help you in your scripts to use several conditions:

echo -en "Please guess the number of cars: "

read X
echo $X | grep "[^0-9]" > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ "$X" -ge "100" ]; then
echo "Sorry, not correct"
else
if [ "$X" -lt "100" ]; then
echo "You are in right area"

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 if [ "$X" -eq "7" ]; then
echo "You entered the magic number!"
fi
fi
fi

Results will be like following figure:

It is important to determine correct ranges. In this command first range includes all integers
greater than 100, other if statements (conditions) will be applied only if you enter “else” term in
the right place.
To read more about if statement and all flags in this command please refer to:
https://linuxacademy.com/blog/linux/conditions-in-bash-scripting-if-statements/

Another example of if statement in combination with a while loop:

cd ~/Desktop
currfile=1
while read line
do

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 if [ "$line" = "1" ]
then
(( currfile++ ))
else
echo "$line" >> ${currfile}.txt
fi
done < names.txt

Exercise 8: sed
sed or stream editor is a very useful command. You see this command very commonly in scripts
which work on input output files. You can use this command to replace, delete, add, or highlight
terms. But, it is a tricky command with several flags that you can find some of them in html.
Please run the following command.
cd ~/Desktop
sed (–e) 's/$/ 1/g' myname.txt
you can once execute it with –e flag and see the results:

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The best thing about “sed” is that, changes aren’t saved except when you use (-e) flag.
Accordingly, you can modify your file when you will be sure about the commands and changes.
In addition, you can perform any changes in your target file using flags. However, when you
search about “sed” you will find commands with slashes and back slashes in the style of
(s/…/…/). s means substitution. The first part of the expression contains a basic regular expression
(regex). The escaped parentheses \( and \) are used to group parts of matched text that can be back
referenced by \1 in the second part of the s-command. At the end of the expression is the letter g, which is
the "global" flag, which means that the operation should be repeated for every occurrence on the line.

Exercise 10: “sed” command- part2

“sed” commands will more touchable for you after running the following script on the file you created
before called “names.txt” and its content is:
This is your name: Elmirajoon
This is my name: ELi
This is yourname: Elmi
This is yourname: Elmira
This is yourname: Elmirajoon
This is my name: Elnaz
This is yourname: Elmi
This is yourname: Elmira
This is yourname: Elmirajoon
This is my name: Elijoon
This is yourname: Elmi
This is yourname: Elmira
This is yourname: Elmirajoon
This is my name: Elnazjoon
This is yourname: Elmi
This is yourname: Elmira
This is yourname: Elmirajoon

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In order to change (:) to a pipe (|), tun the following script:
cd ~/Desktop
sed 's/:/ |/g' names.txt
and output is:

similarly, try to replace (:) with (|) in the string of:

101:8:43:4:72:14:41:69:85:3:137:4:3:0:4:0:9:3:0:3:12:3:
In order to do this, try following command:
sed 's/\([^:]*:*\):/\1|/g' mynamen.txt
and the following one:
cd ~/Desktop
sed 's/\([^:]*:[^:]*\):/\1|/g' mynamen.txt
Now, you can compare two scripts and obtained results. Please analyze details, this will help you to write
your own scripts.
For this case, you can consider using other commands. For this, see https://www.unix.com/shell-
programming-and-scripting/228901-awk-sed-change-every-2nd-field.html.

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Exercise 11: “awk” command

“awk” helps you to easily modify your files, read, parse them, and select special terms or lines.
Try the following command on the “names.txt” file you have created before in your Desktop
directory.
cd ~/Desktop
awk '{print $1}' names.txt
And you will see this:

The first column of “names.txt” file is “This”. Using “awk”, you can also delete or replace
strings. For more details with “awk” you can read https://likegeeks.com/awk-command/.

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Exercise 12: “awk”- Part2

awk '
BEGIN {
i=0
while ( i <= 61000 )
{
print i, 0
i += 50
}
} ' >> output.txt

You can easily combine awk command with other commands and conditions. In this example,
while loop has been used to create a set of integers. Please regard all the lines and how each
command and flag has been used.

Second example of “awk’ command contains a combination of several commands which have
been introduced in this tutorial. Please run it:
cd ~/Desktop
ls -lrt | grep ^- | awk 'END{print $NF}' names.txt
And try the following script:
cd ~/Desktop
ls -lrt | grep ^- | awk 'END{print $OF}' names.txt
You can compare results and realize the difference and little details that you can use to achieve
your favorite results. As a short explain, “ls –lrt” has been used to list files and consider newest
of them, grep^ has been used to find all the line, and ultimately awk has been used to print “OF”
or . More explanations can be found in http://manpages.courier-mta.org/htmlman1/ls.1.html, and
https://www.linuxnix.com/awk-scripting-learn-awk-built-in-variables-with-examples/.

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The present tutorial has been prepared to guide beginners of shell scripting. The simple
difference of it is its simple but at the same time involving style of guidance. Any beginner who
runs all the scripts of this tutorial will touch applications of all introduced functions and
commands. Commands and functions have also been selected based on the frequency of their
usages in all fields of programming and simplifying scripts. Many of examples here could be
written using other commands; however, I tried to show how simply and shortly you can execute
your desired modifications and calculations on your files or strings. I also preferred running
solving problems in 12 exercises instead of explaining functions of each command because I
believe by this way, every one even who is not an expert in computer science will be able to
write some scripts. Combination of commands have always been my own problems.
Accordingly, I decided to add commands which I introduce in each exercise to the next exercise
to make the usage of combination of commands familiar to you. I am sure regarding details will
help you to write more complexed scripts. You can contact me from: [email protected].
Best Wishes

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