Revision no.

: PPT/2K403/02

Bash Basics
 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Bash Basics
2

• Initialization Files.
• Aliases.
• Variables.
• Command History.
• Input and Output Channels.
• Types of Commands.
• Quoting.
• Substitution and Expansion.
• Command –Line Interpretation.
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 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Initialization Files
3

– There are two different types of Shells :

• Login shells
• Started when a user logs in to system.
• The following files are read when starting a Login shell :
– /etc/profile : This files sets umask(determines file permissions defaults)and
number of different variables.
– ~/.bash_profile : Its stores user customizations, for ex: to change
command prompt. By default, this file is not present on the SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server.
– ~/.bash_login : The second user-specific file that Bash tries to find after
– ~/.bash_profile. By default, this file is also not created on SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server.
– ~/.profile : On the SUSE Linux Enterprise server, this file is created for each
new user by default.

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Initialization Files (contd.)

4

• /etc/bash.bashrc : A system- wide configuration file of the SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server for Bash-specific settings, such as alias definitions
and special variables.

• Non-login shells
• Started from within a running Shell.
– ~/.bashrc : A configuration file read only by Bash in which users can store
their customizations.

– Linux distributions have a default setup that ensures users do

not see any difference between login shell and non-login shell.
– This achieved by reading ~/.bash.rc file when a login shell is
started.

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 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Aliases
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– Aliases allows you to create shortcuts for command and their

options or to create commands with entirely different names.
– alias command can tell you about different aliases defined on
your system.
– For ex: alias | grep mkdir , command tells you that md is an
alias for mkdir .
– type command will show you that the given command is alias for
something else.
– type command will tell you whether it is in built-in shell
command, a regular command, or an alias.
• for ex : type –a ls
• ls is aliased to ‘ls $ LS_OPTIONS’
• ls is /bin/ls

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 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Aliases (contd.)
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– The example shows that ls, too is alias,

– The –a option was used for type to show both the contents of the
alias and the path to the original ls command.
– Aliases used on a system-wide basis are defined in the file
/etc/bash.bashrc.
– Aliases are defined by alias command and can be removed with
the unalias command.
– Entering unalias ls would remove the alias for ls , causing ls to
stop coloring its output.
– On the SuSE Linux ,the file ~/.alias is created for personal aliases
defined by each user.
– This file is read in by ~/.bashrc, where a command is included to
that effect.

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 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Variable
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– The behavior of the shell is influenced by its internal variables.

– Shell variables control the behavior of the shell itself and are only
relevant locally(for currently active shell).
– Environment variables have larger scope and also influence any
other programs started from within the current shell.
– They are inherited by any subshells or child processes.

• Working With Variables

– The syntax to set a shell variable is VARIABLE=value, by
which the contents of value are directly assigned to new variable.
– For ex:
• cms@localhost:-> VARIABLE1=“Good Morning”
• cms@localhost:-> echo $VARIABLE1
Good Morning

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 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Variable (contd.)
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– With the command export, a shell variable can be turned into an

environment variable.
– you can use these commands ,to see which variable is set for
your shell;
• export Lists all environment variables.
• set Lists all variables as well as functions that been
declared.

• env Displays a list of all currently defined variables

and their contents.

– The command unset variable can be used to delete a variable

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Variable (contd.)
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• Important Internal Bash Variables

• Variables Description
• HOME The user’s home directory.
• PATH The search path of commands.
• PWD Current working Directory
• IFS The internal field seprator
• PS1 The primary shell prompt
• PS2 The secondary shell prompt
• PS3 The tertiary shell prompt
• ? The exit status or of the most recent child process
• $ The process ID of the current shell itself.
• # The number of arguments passed to the shell
• 0-9 argument 0, argument 1 so on as passed to shell
• * all arguments (except argument 0) as a single word
• @ all arguments (except argument 0) as separate words

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Command History
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– Bash keeps a list of all the commands that have been entered in
the command history.

– The variable HISTSIZE determines how many commands are kept

in the history and the variable HISTFILE determines to which file it
is saved.

– The default history file is ~/.bash_history and default size is set to

500.

– The command history prints a numbered list of all the command

stored in history.

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Input and Output Channels

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– Each programs relies on two standard data channels to receive

and another channel to output error messages.
– There are three Standard data channels
– Standard input(stdin) 0
– Standard output(stdout) 1
– Standard error(stderr) 2
– These numbers can be referenced to redirect the data channel.
– Each of the three I/O channels can be redirected independently
from the others.
– Redirection also allows to link up two processes by feeding the
output of the first process through a pipe then second process
takes this as its input.
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 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Input and Output Channels (contd.)

12

• Redirection to Files
– All three data channels can be redirected to files.
– A program could read the required parameters from a file instead
of the standard input.
– If you give command wc , it will print number of lines and
characters.
– The input can also be taken directly from a file.
– This requires the ‘<‘ operator to redirect the input.
• cms@localhost:-> wc < /etc/passwd
– This command will tell the program to read its input from
specified file, rather than from standard input.

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Input and Output Channels (contd.)

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• The here Operator <<

– The here operator “<<“ makes it possible to feed more than one
line of input to commands that read their input from the command
line.
• For ex: cms@localhost:-> sort << EOF

– The sort command will take file name as one of its arguments then
arranges the input coming from the file in an alphabetical order
list.
– We use the here operator to feed the command with a list of
words directly from Keyboard.

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Input and Output Channels (contd.)

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• Feeding Output to Another Process

– When we want to link up two programs such that the output
produced by a first program is read as the second program’s
input.
– For ex: If you want to use less pager to directly process the
output of ls -l
• cms@localhost:-> ls –l >filelist
• cms@localhost:-> less filelist
– Other option is you can also pipe.
– A pipe, represented by the ‘|’ symbol, can read the output of
process as available on stdout and directly feed it to another
standard input.
• cms@localhost:-> ls –l | less

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Input and Output Channels (contd.)

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• Chaining Commands With xargs

– The Bash shell as limited input buffer,where there are too long
arguments to be passed to given command.
– The commands aborts with an error.
– The syntax of xargs assumes that it receives a list of arguments
from a first command through pipe.
– The xargs command also need to be told about the program to
which it should pass the arguments of the first.
• command1 | xargs command2
– The buffer of xargs is larger than the shell’s buffer.
– So xargs first collects all arguments passed until its buffer is full,
then it calls the second command to supply these arguments to it.

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 Revision no.: PPT/2K403/02

Input and Output Channels (contd.)

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• Duplicating the output with tee

– Program which writes to standard output and to a file at the same
time,it is done by tee command.

– A file name is specified as an argument for tee to tell it to which

file the second output stream should write.

– For ex:

• cms@localhost:-> find / -type f –name “*.c” | tee cfiles-found

– In above example it is possible to view output of the find

command and saving same output to file cfiles-found

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Types of command
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– The command exec and export are the types of commands called
shell built-ins.
– This commands are integral part of BASH itself and run as apart
of current shell, no child process is started by them.
– To check the type of command, use type command.
• cms@localhost:~> type cd
cd is a shell builtin

– type tells you whether it is an alias, a built-in, or a command

external to the shell.
– Enter type –a to see all available information.
• cms@localhost:~> type –a ls

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Quoting
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– Every command line entered in a Bash shell will be interpreted by

the Bash program first.
– These special characters include i.e spaces, the internal field
separator –the character separating individual arguments and the
“$” sign, which is used for variable substitution.
– There are different forms of quotation
• \ quotes the following Character
• “….” quotes any special characters enclosed with
exception of “$”.
• ‘ …’ quotes any special characters enclosed.

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Substitution and Expansion

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– When executing a command in the shell the entire command line

is evaluated by the shell while also interpreting any special
characters.
– The latter includes various forms of substitution and expansion-
among other things the shell replaces variables with their values
and expands metacharacters to file names.(called as file globbing)
• Variable Substitution
– Whenever the shell encounters a “$”it assumes a variable will
follow then replaces the variable with its value.
– Example: for variable substitution:
• cms@localhost:-> echo $USER
cms

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Substitution and Expansion (contd.)

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• Filename Expansion (File Globbing)

– When specifying a file name, it is possible to use wild cards or
metacharacters representing characters to match.
– These are the metacharacters used by the shell for filename
expansion:
• Metacharacter Expands to /Matches
• ? any single Character(except ‘.’ & ‘/’).
• * any string(including null characters).
• […] any of the characters enclosed.

• [!..] none of the characters enclosed.

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Substitution and Expansion (contd.)

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• Brace Expansion
– Curly braces allow to specify a set of characters from which shell
will automatically form all possible combinations.
– Characters to be combined with given string must be specified as
comma-separated list with no spaces.
– For ex:
• cms@localhost:-> mkdir directory {1,2}{a,b}
• cms@localhost:-> ls
directory1a directory2a
directory1b directory2b

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Substitution and Expansion (contd.)

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• Tilde Expansion
– With the help of tilde(“~”)the shell can refer to user’s home
directory
– The tilde can be used in two different ways :
• ~ Used as single character,the tilde expands to the home directory of
the user running shell.
• ~login-name If followed by a user(login) name,it expands to home
directory of that user without knowing actual path.
– Any user can refer to his home directory by specifying the path as
simple “~”
• cms@localhost:/tmp> cp somefile ~/somedirectory
• localhost:~ # cp /tmp/somefile ~cms

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Substitution and Expansion (contd.)

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• Command Substitution
– To process the output of some command as an argument of
another command, is done by command substitution.
– Two possibilities to make sure that the shell processes the output
of another command in given command line.
• $(command) Bash-style command substitution
• ‘command’ command substitution.
– For ex:
• cms@localhost:~> echo “ It’s ‘date +%b-%d’ today.”
It’s May-24 today.
– cms@localhost:~> FELLAS=$(who)
– cms@localhost:~> echo $FELLAS
cms :0 May 24 04:50 (console) cms pts/0 Dec 20 04:50
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Substitution and Expansion (contd.)

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• Arithmetic Substitution
– There are two different formats for arithmetic substitution.
• $[ INTEGER1 + INTEGER2 ] An arithmetic operation with one of the
operator “+”, “-”, “*”, or “/” or logical operation,such as AND, OR.
• $(( INTEGER1 – INTEGER2 )) An arithmetic operation with one of the
operators “+”, “-”, “*”, or “/” or logical AND,comparison.

– For ex:
• COUNTER=0

….
COUNTER=$(( COUNTER + 1)

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Substitution and Expansion (contd.)

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– When declaring variable, they can give certain attribute. Variables

are declared using declare command.
• declare –i integer1

• declare –i integer2
• declare –i sum
• ….
• SUM=integer1 + integer2

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Command-Line Interpretation
26

– When processing a command line, the shell interprets in following

order ;
• The command line is parsed up to the first command separator.
• The shell splits the command line into individual words.
• Variables are expanded to their values.
• The shell executes commands marked for substitution with
‘..’or$(..)replacing them with their output.
• Input and output redirection is performed.
• Any new variables are assigned.
• Special characters are interpreted and matched file name are
substituted.
• The command is executed.

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Command-Line Interpretation (contd.)

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– For ex:
– cms@localhost:~> echo files: ‘ls $HOME’ \;date: $(date) > outputfile
– The output of this command line is not printed on standard output,
but directed to the output file.
• Command Separators
– Commands can also be combined such that they are executed in
sequence, without their input and output connected to each other.
• Command1 ; command2
– The first command is executed, and second one is started as soon as first is
finished.
• Command1 & command2
– The first command is started in the background,the second one is started in
the foreground

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Command-Line Interpretation (contd.)

28

• Command1 && command2

– The second command is only started when first command is successful.

• Command1 || command2

– The second commands is only started if first command fails.

– for ex:

• cms@localhost:~> w ; date

– Second command is executed after the first.

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29

Design & Published by:

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MIDC, Marol, Andheri (E), Mumbai –400093, Tel: 91-22-28216511, 28329198
Email: [email protected]
www.cmsinstitute.co.in
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