Bash Programming

Kameswari Chebrolu
 Introduction
• Command-line bash vs bash script
• Scripting: take a set of commands
you’d normally run by hand and put
them in a file. Why?
– Automate tasks to make life easier!
– Can run them repeatedly with one
command!
 Example
• A sequence of commands
• Invoke a script using bash
• Invoke a script as a hash-bang executable
– #!/usr/bin/env bash (env will find the path, better!) or
– #!/bin/bash (absolute path)
– Above is called shebang
• A line of code that tells the shell what program to
use
• # is used for commenting, hence ignored during
execution
– Want to use python, replace bash with python
– Need to make the file executable via chmod
 Variables
• Debug: use echo to print statements
• No typing, no need for declaration
– Bash variables are character strings, but, depending on
context permits integer operations
• Defined using the assign operator "="
– e.g. s=hello
– No space before or after!
– Variable name can include alphabets, digits, and
underscore; can be started with alphabets and
underscore only; case sensitive
– Value can be used with the expression $s
 Few things to note
• Special character need escaping via single
quotes ('...') or back slash (\)
– \” or \’ or \\ or \$
• Single and double quotes: Help group
arguments with spaces
– Single quotes (') preserve the literal value of each
character
– Double quotes (“”) preserve the literal value of all
characters with the exception of $, `, \
 Environment Variables
• Variables in your system that describe your
environment!
– SHELL: what shell you’re running
– USER: username of the current user
– PWD: present working directory
– PATH: specifies the directories to be searched
to find a command
– etc
• “env” command shows the list
 Arithmetic Expressions
• Some support but not great
• let is a built-in command in Linux systems used
for evaluating arithmetic expressions
– let “x = 1” or let “a = a + 1”
– let "var1 = 5" "var2 = 10" "var3=var1+var2"; echo
$var3
• $((expression)), $[expression], declare i and bc
are a few other options
 If-then-else
Syntax: if ...
• ... represent conditions
– Conditions can be commands as then
well
• Every command you run in
some statements
shell returns a number elif ...
– No error: returns 0
– Error: usually 1 or -1 or some statements
some other number
corresponds to the type else
of error that occurred
• Chained elif and the else parts are
some statements
optional fi
 Comparisons
-lt <
-gt >
-le <=
-ge >=
-eq ==
-ne !=
 Loops for item in [LIST]
do
• Multiple types of loops: for, while, and [COMMANDS]
until done
• … list of things (need not be numeric)
– item is the loop variable which iterates while [CONDITION]
through each item in the list do
• while executes a piece of code if the [COMMANDS]
control expression is true and only done
stops when it is false (or a explicit
break is found) until [CONDITION]
• until loop is almost equal to the while
do
loop, except that the code is executed
[COMMANDS]
while the control expression evaluates
to false! done
 Command Line Arguments and other
Special Shell Variables
$0 Name of the current shell script
$1-$9 Positional parameters 1 through 9
$# The number of positional parameters
$* All positional parameters, “$*” is one string
$@ All positional parameters, “$@” is a set of strings
$? Return status of most recently executed command
$$ Process id of current process
 Functions
• In Bash, functions emulate the way
commands work
– $*, $#, $1, $2 … (no explicit arguments, much
like in command line arguments)
– Do not return values in usual way
• Any value sent back must be an integer which acts
like the exit code of an executable
 Local vs Gobal Variables
• Environment variables are global; inherited by
any child shells or processes
– Shell variables are only present in the shell in which
they were defined
– Shell variable can be made an environment variable
by using export command
 Arrays
• Arrays declared via -a command
• To access all elements in the array we can use
@
• To get the number of the elements in array
we can use #
• Use “unset” to delete elements
 Read from a file
See relevant file
 References
1. https://linuxconfig.org/bash-scripting-tutorial
(a good beginner’s guide)
2. https://www.javatpoint.com/bash (another
guide)
3. https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ (more
advanced)