May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Skepticism and critical thinking is not panacea, but can help to understand the world better
Bash is a standard shell on Linux and with version 3.2 or later available on
all enterprise platform and installed on Solaris and AIX it make sense to make it
standard interactive shell. The current version as of June 2017 is 4.2. Only HP-UX does not include bash by-default, but HP
does provide a depot package for bash 4.00. Bash 3.2 and later has important
enhancements that make it a better shell (see
Annotated List of Bash
Enhancements) although scripts should be generally limited to small to medium
size as Perl represents much better scripting environment then bash and is installed
by default on all platforms including HP-UX and AIX.
Bash can be called an accidental scripting language. If started very modestly more then 40 years
ago with Borne shell (1977) and C shell (1978). And then gradually had grown into a
scripting
language. the first major enhancement were done in ksh88 and then ksh93, Then bash 30, and 4,0
introduced additional one (but generally in the framework of ksh93).
The key problem with bash is that it is "rarely used language" for most users. That means that
while users might use bash as a command interpreter daily, they program more or less complex
scripts rarely (say once a quarter on average). And from one time to another manage to
forget most of the important staff related to this language. That makes programming in bash a real
challenge.
Also your programming skills evaporate in several months or so, unless you carefully document your "achievements".
You will forget them and go down again to the most basic level of usage of this language when you need to write another bash script.
And you might repeat the same mistakes or even blunders again and again. Logbooks is better
then nothing but generally is not enough. You need a personal wiki. Frontage can serve as a
surrogate Wiki on windows very well. One of the advantages is that you do not need to learn
special wiki script. You can use HTML. The author uses it in this capacity for 20 year or so.
Bash is so called "glue" language and set of classic Unix utilities represent important
part of bash functionality. So in addition to knowledge of bash you need to know at least several dozens
of Unix utilities (and you better know them well ;-). That requirement alone often lead to 'stack overflow". So mental crutches in the
form of your custom references are needed and creating them is a the necessary step because of
complexity of the environment. Which now is beyond human understanding (the situation called
Blind men and an elephant -
Wikipedia).
At the current level of complexity the fact that bash has source code
available changes absolutely nothing for 99% of Unix/linux sysadmins. It is a classic example
of self-closing open source ;-).
At the beginning a good reference book might suffice too (see
Best Shell Books
for recommendations) but gradually you should create you own website or wiki and work on
enhancing it. Even people with 20 year Unix experience often can't remember of the vital
option of the most common utilities such as ls, grep and find.
Also blunders in bash can be very costly and lead to the lostt of data, crash of the OS or
both. They are often connected iether with misunderstanding of bash behaviour or
misunderstanding of behaviour or one of Unix utilities you use, or Unix itself, or make accidentally
or out of exhaustion or under time pressure some nasty error yourself. See
Sysadmin Horror Stories
The key problem with bash is that it is "rarely used language" for most users. That
means that while users might use bash as a command interpreter daily, they program more
or less complex scripts rarely (say once a quarter on average). And from one time
to another manage to forget most of the important staff related to this language. That makes
programming in bash a real challenge.
While bash has a humble start and much weaker designer then ksh93 and was at
times extremely buggy, the gap narrowed in version 3.2 to the extent that better
command line user friendliness of bash make it more attractive, especially as an
interactive shell then supplied with OS ksh and C-shell. Most ksh93 innovations
are now present in some form in bash 3.2. As bash is standard shell on Linux
and is installed by default in Solaris it status as an enterprise shell is almost
as strong as ksh93 (which is mostly present in old, weaker versions. Current bash
has the best debugger and from this point of view represents the best shell. But
portable script still are probably better to be written for ksh88 or POSIX shell
which is lowest common denominator available on all Unixes. To write scripts in
Borne shell now is extremely stupid and wasteful.
Bash 3.2 and later is the one of the most portable advanced shell around (ksh93
and zsh are still a strong competition; ksh93 is definitely more reliable for scripts
and does not contain such design blunders as the last stage of the pipe belonging
to subshell instead of the invoking shell (actually fixed in lager version of bash).
Bash-related books dominates shell-related publications and as such the level
of known-how for bash is higher then for other shells (see
Best Shell Books).The advantage of bash for large enterprise environment is that it comes
by default with linux, Solaris and AIX (unfortunately in pretty different versions).
Only HP-UX does not have bash installed by default. Also it is the best portable
interactive shell, much closer to tcsh then any competition.
Still you need some efforts to make the default shell. Unfortunately the default
shell for Solaris is the "Bourne shell" or
/usr/bin/sh
Bourne shell is a pretty weak outdated shell and attempt to base shell scripting
portability on this outdated shell is a serious strategic error (bash probably should
be used instead). It is still used as root shell in Solaris ,but that's due to Solaris
legacy not because it gives anything but disadvantages; attempts to claim that this
somehow increases the security of root due to the fact that it is static linked
are weak and the argumentation is open for discussion. All-in-all usage of Bourne
shell as a default root shell in Solaris might be considered to be a blunder: system
administrators definitely need a better shell.
Usage of Borne shall as a default shell might slightly increase the chances of
recovery in case /usr partition
is damaged, but this is a pretty serious case and usually means serious troubles
with other partitions on the disk anyway (unless this is the case when in Solaris
link /bin -> usr/bin is destroyed,
but such cases are simple to fight by refereeing shell as
/usr/bin/ksh in
/etc/passwd). If this is a serious trouble than
booting from a CD a mounting the damaged volume is always a good idea and in this
case it does not matter what shell root is using; you can change it anyway.
Bash 3.2 is reasonably easy to build from source. Get and unpack in your home directory
the archive. This will create a directory called bash-3.2 in your home directory.
If you do not have the gunzip utility, you can obtain it in the same way you obtained
bash or simply use gzip -d instead. The archive contains all of the source code
needed to compile bash and a large amount of documentation and examples. the latter
have their own value.
The bash archive contains a main directory and a set of files and subdirectories.
Among the first files you should examine are:
CHANGES A comprehensive list of bug fixes and new features since the
last version
COPYING The GNU Copyleft for bash
MANIFEST A list of all the files and directories in the archive
NEWS A list of new features since the last version
READMEA short introduction and instructions for compiling
bash
doc Directory with information related to bash in various formats (please note
that many syadmin never read those docs)
examples Directory with examples of startup files, scripts, and functions
The doc directory contains a few articles that are worth reading. You can print
man page for reference with command nroff-man bash.1 | more
It is convenient to have a hardcopy so you can write notes all over it. Also valuable,
FAQ is a Frequently Asked Questions document with answers, readline.3
is the manual entry for the readline facility, and article.ms
is an article about the shell that appeared in Linux Journal, and was written
by the current bash maintainer Chet Ramey.
An examples directory is especially important and is well worth exploring
(after you've finished reading this book, of course). It includes sample code, scripts,
functions, and startup files. See Examples
shipped with bash 3.2 and newer
An examples directory
directory is especially important and is well worth exploring (after you've
finished reading this book, of course). It includes sample code, scripts,
functions, and startup files. See Examples shipped with
bash 3.2 and newer
Some interesting features of bash in version 3.2 and up
Some interesting features of bash include:
Special COMMAND_PROMPT built-in variable
makes it easy to use functions for command prompt generation. For example the
color of the prompt can be changed dynamically depending of the whether you
are root or not and what was the return
code of the last command. See
Bash Prompt
HOWTO
A lot of borrowing from tcsh including:
Built-in pushd/popd/dirs
commands (implementation leaves much to be desired as there is no way to
avoid duplicates like in tcsh, but still it is slightly better then nothing
;-). References to directories based on content of DIRSTACK are also implemented
(cd ~1; cd ~2; etc)
C-shell style history info retrieval:
Arrows based browsing of history works out of the box.
! C-shell style history retrieval. !$ is the last
argument of the previous line
HISTCONTROL may now include the
erasedups option (version
3.0 and higher)
C-shell style arrows keys history browsing
"bang commands" repeatedly, saving you some typing (via the "!<digit>
syntax).
Indexed arrays of unlimited size
Integer arithmetic in any base from two to sixty-four
Availability of =~ operator that permits using more or less normal
regular expressions (it's incredible stupidity to use a dozen of regular expression
definitions in a single OS like is the case with Unix and Linux).
Note:bash before version 3.2.17 has extremely
buggy and unreliable support of this feature. Generally it is better to use 4.x in production
env.
Normal for loop with index. for ((
expr1 ; expr2 ; expr3 )) ; do list ; done
Process substitution (
> (command) and < (command)
). It's not enabled by default. and need
to be enabled by the command set +o posix Two forms of
process substitution are:
<(list) To substitute a command pipeline for
an input file
>(list) To substitute a command pipeline for
an output file
In the case of the < and > forms, the shell will
run process list asynchronously, connected to a named pipe (FIFO).
The name of this pipe will become the argument to the command.
Please visit Heiner
Steven
SHELLdorado
the best shell scripting site on the Internet
If the form with < is selected then result of execution of the
process list will serve as an input file. This, for allows you to use the output
of one or several commands as parameters to the utilities that accepts file.
For instance you can compare the contents of two directories by typing:
diff <( ls dir1 ) <( ls dir2 )
That can be used for concatenating input in pipes:
cat <(echo hello) <(echo world) | echo
If < is used, then the file passed as an argument will be a
named pipe connected to the output of the list process.
cuts fields 1 and 3 from the files file1 and file2 respectively, pastes the
results together, and sends it to the processes process1 and process2. Note
that the file, which is passed as an argument to the command, is a system pipe
so programs that expect to lseek(2) on the file will not work. Also note that
the previous example can be more compactly and efficiently written as:
history and aliases can be used in shell scripts, not only in interective
sessions.
new readline variables: enable-keypad, mark-directories, input-meta,
visible-stats, disable-completion, comment-begin
new readline commands to manipulate the mark and operate on the region
new DEBUG trap
expanded (and now documented) restricted shell mode
Due to this bash shell is gradually gaining grounds as the preferred interactive
shell for Solaris and other enterprise class Unixes.
Older version of bash (2.x series) are obsolete and should not be used. The recommended
version is 3.2 patch level 3 or above. 4.x is recommended on RHEL 6.x and up.
Whether we want it or not, bash is the
shell you face in Linux, and unfortunately, it is often misunderstood and misused. Issues
related to creating your bash environment are not well addressed in existing books. This book
fills the gap.
Few authors understand that bash is a complex, non-orthogonal language operating in a
complex Linux environment. To make things worse, bash is an evolution of Unix shell and is a
rather old language with warts and all. Using it properly as a programming language requires a
serious study, not just an introduction to the basic concepts. Even issues related to
customization of dotfiles are far from trivial, and you need to know quite a bit to do it
properly.
At the same time, proper customization of bash environment does increase your productivity
(or at least lessens the frustration of using Linux on the command line ;-)
The author covered the most important concepts related to this task, such as bash history,
functions, variables, environment inheritance, etc. It is really sad to watch like the majorly
of Linux users do not use these opportunities and forever remain on the "level zero" using
default dotfiles with bare minimum customization.
This book contains some valuable tips even for a seasoned sysadmin (for example, the use of
!& in pipes), and as such, is worth at least double of suggested price. It allows you
intelligently customize your bash environment after reading just 160 pages and doing the
suggested exercises.
set s we saw before
, but shopt s look very similar. Just inputting shopt shows a bunch of options:
$ shopt
cdable_vars off
cdspell on
checkhash off
checkwinsize on
cmdhist on
compat31 off
dotglob off
I found a set of answers here
. Essentially, it looks like it's a consequence of bash (and other shells) being built on sh, and adding shopt as
another way to set extra shell options. But I'm still unsure if you know the answer, let me know.
4) Here Docs and Here Strings
'Here docs' are files created inline in the shell.
The 'trick' is simple. Define a closing word, and the lines between that word and when it appears alone on a line become a
file.
Type this:
$ cat > afile << SOMEENDSTRING
> here is a doc
> it has three lines
> SOMEENDSTRING alone on a line will save the doc
> SOMEENDSTRING
$ cat afile
here is a doc
it has three lines
SOMEENDSTRING alone on a line will save the doc
Notice that:
the string could be included in the file if it was not 'alone' on the line
the string SOMEENDSTRING is more normally END , but that is just convention
Lesser known is the 'here string':
$ cat > asd <<< 'This file has one line'
5) String Variable Manipulation
You may have written code like this before, where you use tools like sed to manipulate strings:
$ VAR='HEADERMy voice is my passwordFOOTER'
$ PASS="$(echo $VAR | sed 's/^HEADER(.*)FOOTER/1/')"
$ echo $PASS
But you may not be aware that this is possible natively in bash .
This means that you can dispense with lots of sed and awk shenanigans.
One way to rewrite the above is:
$ VAR='HEADERMy voice is my passwordFOOTER'
$ PASS="${VAR#HEADER}"
$ PASS="${PASS%FOOTER}"
$ echo $PASS
The # means 'match and remove the following pattern from the start of the string'
The % means 'match and remove the following pattern from the end of the string
Now run chmod +x default.sh and run the script with ./default.sh first second .
Observer how the third argument's default has been assigned, but not the first two.
You can also assign directly with ${VAR: = defaultval} (equals sign, not dash) but note that this won't work with
positional variables in scripts or functions. Try changing the above script to see how it fails.
7) Traps
The trap built-in can be used to 'catch' when a
signal is sent to your script.
Note that there are two 'lines' above, even though you used ; to separate the commands.
TMOUT
You can timeout reads, which can be really handy in some scripts
#!/bin/bash
TMOUT=5
echo You have 5 seconds to respond...
read
echo ${REPLY:-noreply}
... ... ...
10) Associative Arrays
Talking of moving to other languages, a rule of thumb I use is that if I need arrays then I drop bash to go to python (I even
created a Docker container for a tool to help with this here
).
What I didn't know until I read up on it was that you can have associative arrays in bash.
Variables are a core part of most serious bash scripts (and even one-liners!), so managing
them is another important way to reduce the possibility of your script breaking.
Change your script to add the 'set' line immediately after the first line and see what
happens:
#!/bin/bash
set -o nounset
A="some value"
echo "${A}"
echo "${B}"
...I always set nounset on my scripts as a habit. It can catch many problems
before they become serious.
Tracing Variables
If you are working with a particularly complex script, then you can get to the point where
you are unsure what happened to a variable.
Try running this script and see what happens:
#!/bin/bash
set -o nounset
declare A="some value"
function a {
echo "${BASH_SOURCE}>A A=${A} LINENO:${1}"
}
trap "a $LINENO" DEBUG
B=value
echo "${A}"
A="another value"
echo "${A}"
echo "${B}"
There's a problem with this code. The output is slightly wrong. Can you work out what is
going on? If so, try and fix it.
You may need to refer to the bash man page, and make sure you understand quoting in bash
properly.
It's quite a tricky one to fix 'properly', so if you can't fix it, or work out what's wrong
with it, then ask me directly and I will help.
Profiling Bash Scripts
Returning to the xtrace (or set -x flag), we can exploit its use
of a PS variable to implement the profiling of a script:
#!/bin/bash
set -o nounset
set -o xtrace
declare A="some value"
PS4='$(date "+%s%N => ")'
B=
echo "${A}"
A="another value"
echo "${A}"
echo "${B}"
ls
pwd
curl -q bbc.co.uk
From this you should be able to tell what PS4 does. Have a play with it, and
read up and experiment with the other PS variables to get familiar with what they
do.
NOTE: If you are on a Mac, then you might only get second-level granularity on the
date!
Linting with Shellcheck
Finally, here is a very useful tip for understanding bash more deeply and improving any bash
scripts you come across.
Shellcheck is a website and a
package available on most platforms that gives you advice to help fix and improve your shell
scripts. Very often, its advice has prompted me to research more deeply and understand bash
better.
Here is some example output from a script I found on my laptop:
$ shellcheck shrinkpdf.sh
In shrinkpdf.sh line 44:
-dColorImageResolution=$3 \
^-- SC2086: Double quote to prevent globbing and word splitting.
In shrinkpdf.sh line 46:
-dGrayImageResolution=$3 \
^-- SC2086: Double quote to prevent globbing and word splitting.
In shrinkpdf.sh line 48:
-dMonoImageResolution=$3 \
^-- SC2086: Double quote to prevent globbing and word splitting.
In shrinkpdf.sh line 57:
if [ ! -f "$1" -o ! -f "$2" ]; then
^-- SC2166: Prefer [ p ] || [ q ] as [ p -o q ] is not well defined.
In shrinkpdf.sh line 60:
ISIZE="$(echo $(wc -c "$1") | cut -f1 -d\ )"
^-- SC2046: Quote this to prevent word splitting.
^-- SC2005: Useless echo? Instead of 'echo $(cmd)', just use 'cmd'.
In shrinkpdf.sh line 61:
OSIZE="$(echo $(wc -c "$2") | cut -f1 -d\ )"
^-- SC2046: Quote this to prevent word splitting.
^-- SC2005: Useless echo? Instead of 'echo $(cmd)', just use 'cmd'.
The most common reminders are regarding potential quoting issues, but you can see other
useful tips in the above output, such as preferred arguments to the test
construct, and advice on "useless" echo s.
Exercise
1) Find a large bash script on a social coding site such as GitHub, and run
shellcheck over it. Contribute back any improvements you find.
"... I use "!*" for "all arguments". It doesn't have the flexibility of your approach but it's faster for my most common need. ..."
"... Provided that your shell is readline-enabled, I find it much easier to use the arrow keys and modifiers to navigate through history than type !:1 (or having to remeber what it means). ..."
7 Bash history shortcuts you will actually useSave time on the command line with these essential Bash shortcuts.
02 Oct 2019 Ian 205
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Most guides to Bash history shortcuts exhaustively list every single one available. The problem with that is I would use a shortcut
once, then glaze over as I tried out all the possibilities. Then I'd move onto my working day and completely forget them, retaining
only the well-known !! trick I learned when I first
started using Bash.
This article outlines the shortcuts I actually use every day. It is based on some of the contents of my book,
Learn Bash the hard way ; (you can read a
preview of it to learn more).
When people see me use these shortcuts, they often ask me, "What did you do there!?" There's minimal effort or intelligence required,
but to really learn them, I recommend using one each day for a week, then moving to the next one. It's worth taking your time to
get them under your fingers, as the time you save will be significant in the long run.
1. The "last argument" one: !$
If you only take one shortcut from this article, make it this one. It substitutes in the last argument of the last command
into your line.
Consider this scenario:
$ mv / path / to / wrongfile / some / other / place
mv: cannot stat '/path/to/wrongfile' : No such file or directory
Ach, I put the wrongfile filename in my command. I should have put rightfile instead.
You might decide to retype the last command and replace wrongfile with rightfile completely. Instead, you can type:
$ mv / path / to / rightfile ! $
mv / path / to / rightfile / some / other / place
and the command will work.
There are other ways to achieve the same thing in Bash with shortcuts, but this trick of reusing the last argument of the last
command is one I use the most.
2. The " n th argument" one: !:2
Ever done anything like this?
$ tar -cvf afolder afolder.tar
tar: failed to open
Like many others, I get the arguments to tar (and ln ) wrong more often than I would like to admit.
The last command's items are zero-indexed and can be substituted in with the number after the !: .
Obviously, you can also use this to reuse specific arguments from the last command rather than all of them.
3. The "all the arguments": !*
Imagine I run a command like:
$ grep '(ping|pong)' afile
The arguments are correct; however, I want to match ping or pong in a file, but I used grep rather than egrep .
I start typing egrep , but I don't want to retype the other arguments. So I can use the !:1$ shortcut to ask for all the arguments
to the previous command from the second one (remember they're zero-indexed) to the last one (represented by the $ sign).
$ egrep ! : 1 -$
egrep '(ping|pong)' afile
ping
You don't need to pick 1-$ ; you can pick a subset like 1-2 or 3-9 (if you had that many arguments in the previous command).
4. The "last but n " : !-2:$
The shortcuts above are great when I know immediately how to correct my last command, but often I run commands after the
original one, which means that the last command is no longer the one I want to reference.
For example, using the mv example from before, if I follow up my mistake with an ls check of the folder's contents:
$ mv / path / to / wrongfile / some / other / place
mv: cannot stat '/path/to/wrongfile' : No such file or directory
$ ls / path / to /
rightfile
I can no longer use the !$ shortcut.
In these cases, I can insert a - n : (where n is the number of commands to go back in the history) after the ! to
grab the last argument from an older command:
$ mv / path / to / rightfile ! - 2 :$
mv / path / to / rightfile / some / other / place
Again, once you learn it, you may be surprised at how often you need it.
5. The "get me the folder" one: !$:h
This one looks less promising on the face of it, but I use it dozens of times daily.
Imagine I run a command like this:
$ tar -cvf system.tar / etc / system
tar: / etc / system: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.
The first thing I might want to do is go to the /etc folder to see what's in there and work out what I've done wrong.
I can do this at a stroke with:
$ cd ! $:h
cd / etc
This one says: "Get the last argument to the last command ( /etc/system ) and take off its last filename component, leaving only
the /etc ."
6. The "the current line" one: !#:1
For years, I occasionally wondered if I could reference an argument on the current line before finally looking it up and learning
it. I wish I'd done so a long time ago. I most commonly use it to make backup files:
$ cp / path / to / some / file ! #:1.bak
cp / path / to / some / file / path / to / some / file.bak
but once under the fingers, it can be a very quick alternative to
7. The "search and replace" one: !!:gs
This one searches across the referenced command and replaces what's in the first two / characters with what's in the second two.
Say I want to tell the world that my s key does not work and outputs f instead:
$ echo my f key doef not work
my f key doef not work
Then I realize that I was just hitting the f key by accident. To replace all the f s with s es, I can type:
$ !! :gs / f / s /
echo my s key does not work
my s key does not work
It doesn't work only on single characters; I can replace words or sentences, too:
$ !! :gs / does / did /
echo my s key did not work
my s key did not work Test them out
Just to show you how these shortcuts can be combined, can you work out what these toenail clippings will output?
Bash can be an elegant source of shortcuts for the day-to-day command-line user. While there are thousands of tips and tricks
to learn, these are my favorites that I frequently put to use.
This article was originally posted on Ian's blog,
Zwischenzugs.com
, and is reused with permission.
Orr, August 25, 2019 at 10:39 pm
BTW – you inspired me to try and understand how to repeat the nth command entered on command line. For example I type 'ls'
and then accidentally type 'clear'. !! will retype clear again but I wanted to retype ls instead using a shortcut.
Bash doesn't accept ':' so !:2 didn't work. !-2 did however, thank you!
Dima August 26, 2019 at 7:40 am
Nice article! Just another one cool and often used command: i.e.: !vi opens the last vi command with their arguments.
cbarrick on 03 Oct 2019
Your "current line" example is too contrived. Your example is copying to a backup like this:
$ cp /path/to/some/file !#:1.bak
But a better way to write that is with filename generation:
$ cp /path/to/some/file{,.bak}
That's not a history expansion though... I'm not sure I can come up with a good reason to use `!#:1`.
Darryl Martin August 26, 2019 at 4:41 pm
I seldom get anything out of these "bash commands you didn't know" articles, but you've got some great tips here. I'm writing
several down and sticking them on my terminal for reference.
A couple additions I'm sure you know.
I use "!*" for "all arguments". It doesn't have the flexibility of your approach but it's faster for my most common need.
I recently started using Alt-. as a substitute for "!$" to get the last argument. It expands the argument on the line, allowing
me to modify it if necessary.
The problem with bash's history shorcuts for me is... that I never had the need to learn them.
Provided that your shell is readline-enabled, I find it much easier to use the arrow keys and modifiers to navigate through
history than type !:1 (or having to remeber what it means).
Examples:
Ctrl+R for a Reverse search
Ctrl+A to move to the begnining of the line (Home key also)
Ctrl+E to move to the End of the line (End key also)
Ctrl+K to Kill (delete) text from the cursor to the end of the line
Ctrl+U to kill text from the cursor to the beginning of the line
Alt+F to move Forward one word (Ctrl+Right arrow also)
Alt+B to move Backward one word (Ctrl+Left arrow also)
etc.
You may already be familiar with 2>&1 , which redirects standard error
to standard output, but until I stumbled on it in the manual, I had no idea that you can pipe
both standard output and standard error into the next stage of the pipeline like this:
if doesnotexist |& grep 'command not found' >/dev/null
then
echo oops
fi
3) $''
This construct allows you to specify specific bytes in scripts without fear of triggering
some kind of encoding problem. Here's a command that will grep through files
looking for UK currency ('£') signs in hexadecimal recursively:
grep -r $'\xc2\xa3' *
You can also use octal:
grep -r $'\302\243' *
4) HISTIGNORE
If you are concerned about security, and ever type in commands that might have sensitive
data in them, then this one may be of use.
This environment variable does not put the commands specified in your history file
if you type them in. The commands are separated by colons:
HISTIGNORE="ls *:man *:history:clear:AWS_KEY*"
You have to specify the whole line, so a glob character may be needed if you want
to exclude commands and their arguments or flags.
5) fc
If readline key bindings
aren't under your fingers, then this one may come in handy.
It calls up the last command you ran, and places it into your preferred editor (specified by
the EDITOR variable). Once edited, it re-runs the command.
6) ((i++))
If you can't be bothered with faffing around with variables in bash with the
$[] construct, you can use the C-style compound command.
So, instead of:
A=1
A=$[$A+1]
echo $A
you can do:
A=1
((A++))
echo $A
which, especially with more complex calculations, might be easier on the eye.
7)
caller
Another builtin bash command, caller gives context about the context of your
shell's
SHLVL is a related shell variable which gives the level of depth of the calling
stack.
This can be used to create stack traces for more complex bash scripts.
Here's a die function, adapted from the bash hackers' wiki that gives a stack
trace up through the calling frames:
#!/bin/bash
die() {
local frame=0
((FRAMELEVEL=SHLVL - frame))
echo -n "${FRAMELEVEL}: "
while caller $frame; do
((frame++));
((FRAMELEVEL=SHLVL - frame))
if [[ ${FRAMELEVEL} -gt -1 ]]
then
echo -n "${FRAMELEVEL}: "
fi
done
echo "$*"
exit 1
}
which outputs:
3: 17 f1 ./caller.sh
2: 18 f2 ./caller.sh
1: 19 f3 ./caller.sh
0: 20 main ./caller.sh
*** an error occured ***
8) /dev/tcp/host/port
This one can be particularly handy if you find yourself on a container running within a
Kubernetes cluster service
mesh without any network tools (a frustratingly common experience).
Bash provides you with some virtual files which, when referenced, can create socket
connections to other servers.
This snippet, for example, makes a web request to a site and returns the output.
The first line opens up file descriptor 9 to the host brvtsdflnxhkzcmw.neverssl.com on port
80 for reading and writing. Line two sends the raw HTTP request to that socket
connection's file descriptor. The final line retrieves the response.
Obviously, this doesn't handle SSL for you, so its use is limited now that pretty much
everyone is running on https, but when running from application containers within a service
mesh can still prove invaluable, as requests there are initiated using HTTP.
9)
Co-processes
Since version 4 of bash it has offered the capability to run named
coprocesses.
It seems to be particularly well-suited to managing the inputs and outputs to other
processes in a fine-grained way. Here's an annotated and trivial example:
coproc testproc (
i=1
while true
do
echo "iteration:${i}"
((i++))
read -r aline
echo "${aline}"
done
)
This sets up the coprocess as a subshell with the name testproc .
Within the subshell, there's a never-ending while loop that counts its own iterations with
the i variable. It outputs two lines: the iteration number, and a line read in
from standard input.
After creating the coprocess, bash sets up an array with that name with the file descriptor
numbers for the standard input and standard output. So this:
echo "${testproc[@]}"
in my terminal outputs:
63 60
Bash also sets up a variable with the process identifier for the coprocess, which you can
see by echoing it:
echo "${testproc_PID}"
You can now input data to the standard input of this coprocess at will like this:
echo input1 >&"${testproc[1]}"
In this case, the command resolves to: echo input1 >&60 , and the
>&[INTEGER] construct ensures the redirection goes to the coprocess's
standard input.
Now you can read the output of the coprocess's two lines in a similar way, like this:
You might use this to create an expect -like script if you were so inclined, but it
could be generally useful if you want to manage inputs and outputs. Named pipes are another
way to achieve a similar result.
Here's a complete listing for those who want to cut and paste:
Most shells offer the ability to create, manipulate, and query indexed arrays. In plain
English, an indexed array is a list of things prefixed with a number. This list of things,
along with their assigned number, is conveniently wrapped up in a single variable, which makes
it easy to "carry" it around in your code.
Bash, however, includes the ability to create associative arrays and treats these arrays the
same as any other array. An associative array lets you create lists of key and value pairs,
instead of just numbered values.
The nice thing about associative arrays is that keys can be arbitrary:
$ declare -A
userdata
$ userdata [ name ] =seth
$ userdata [ pass ] =8eab07eb620533b083f241ec4e6b9724
$ userdata [ login ] = ` date --utc + % s `
Source is
like a Python import or a Java include. Learn it to expand your Bash prowess.Seth Kenlon (Red Hat) Feed 25
up 2 comments Image by : Opensource.com x Subscribe now
When you log into a Linux shell, you inherit a specific working environment. An
environment , in the context of a shell, means that there are certain variables already
set for you, which ensures your commands work as intended. For instance, the PATH environment variable defines
where your shell looks for commands. Without it, nearly everything you try to do in Bash would
fail with a command not found error. Your environment, while mostly invisible to you as you go
about your everyday tasks, is vitally important.
There are many ways to affect your shell environment. You can make modifications in
configuration files, such as ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile , you can run
services at startup, and you can create your own custom commands or script your own Bash functions
.
Add to your environment with source
Bash (along with some other shells) has a built-in command called source . And
here's where it can get confusing: source performs the same function as the
command . (yes, that's but a single dot), and it's not the same
source as the Tcl command (which may come up on your screen if you
type man source ). The built-in source command isn't in your
PATH at all, in fact. It's a command that comes included as a part of Bash, and to
get further information about it, you can type help source .
The . command is POSIX
-compliant. The source command is not defined by POSIX but is interchangeable with
the . command.
According to Bash help , the source command executes a file in
your current shell. The clause "in your current shell" is significant, because it means it
doesn't launch a sub-shell; therefore, whatever you execute with source happens
within and affects your current environment.
Before exploring how source can affect your environment, try
source on a test file to ensure that it executes code as expected. First, create a
simple Bash script and save it as a file called hello.sh :
#!/usr/bin/env
bash
echo "hello world"
Using source , you can run this script even without setting the executable
bit:
$ source hello.sh
hello world
You can also use the built-in . command for the same results:
$ .
hello.sh
hello world
The source and . commands successfully execute the contents of the
test file.
Set variables and import functions
You can use source to "import" a file into your shell environment, just as you
might use the include keyword in C or C++ to reference a library or the
import keyword in Python to bring in a module. This is one of the most common uses
for source , and it's a common default inclusion in .bashrc files to
source a file called .bash_aliases so that any custom aliases you
define get imported into your environment when you log in.
Here's an example of importing a Bash function. First, create a function in a file called
myfunctions . This prints your public IP address and your local IP
address:
When you use source in Bash, it searches your current directory for the file
you reference. This doesn't happen in all shells, so check your documentation if you're not
using Bash.
If Bash can't find the file to execute, it searches your PATH instead. Again,
this isn't the default for all shells, so check your documentation if you're not using
Bash.
These are both nice convenience features in Bash. This behavior is surprisingly powerful
because it allows you to store common functions in a centralized location on your drive and
then treat your environment like an integrated development environment (IDE). You don't have to
worry about where your functions are stored, because you know they're in your local equivalent
of /usr/include , so no matter where you are when you source them, Bash finds
them.
For instance, you could create a directory called ~/.local/include as a storage
area for common functions and then put this block of code into your .bashrc
file:
for i in $HOME / .local / include /* ; do
source $i
done
This "imports" any file containing custom functions in ~/.local/include into
your shell environment.
Bash is the only shell that searches both the current directory and your PATH
when you use either the source or the . command.
Using source
for open source
Using source or . to execute files can be a convenient way to
affect your environment while keeping your alterations modular. The next time you're thinking
of copying and pasting big blocks of code into your .bashrc file, consider placing
related functions or groups of aliases into dedicated files, and then use source
to ingest them.
Bash tells me the sshd service is not running, so the next thing I want to do is start the service. I had checked its status
with my previous command. That command was saved in history , so I can reference it. I simply run:
$> !!:s/status/start/
sudo systemctl start sshd
The above expression has the following content:
!! - repeat the last command from history
:s/status/start/ - substitute status with start
The result is that the sshd service is started.
Next, I increase the default HISTSIZE value from 500 to 5000 by using the following command:
What if I want to display the last three commands in my history? I enter:
$> history 3
1002 ls
1003 tail audit.log
1004 history 3
I run tail on audit.log by referring to the history line number. In this case, I use line 1003:
$> !1003
tail audit.log
Reference the last argument of the previous command
When I want to list directory contents for different directories, I may change between directories quite often. There is a
nice trick you can use to refer to the last argument of the previous command. For example:
$> pwd
/home/username/
$> ls some/very/long/path/to/some/directory
foo-file bar-file baz-file
In the above example, /some/very/long/path/to/some/directory is the last argument of the previous command.
If I want to cd (change directory) to that location, I enter something like this:
$> cd $_
$> pwd
/home/username/some/very/long/path/to/some/directory
Now simply use a dash character to go back to where I was:
If you're looking for an interactive web portal to learn shell scripting and also try it online, Learn Shell is a great place to
start.
It covers the basics and offers some advanced exercises as well. The content is usually brief and to the point – hence, I'd
recommend you to check this out.
Shell scripting tutorial is web resource that's completely dedicated for shell scripting. You can choose to read the resource for
free or can opt to purchase the PDF, book, or the e-book to support it.
Of course, paying for the paperback edition or the e-book is optional. But, the resource should come in handy for free.
Udemy
is unquestionably one of the most popular platforms for online courses. And, in addition to the paid certified courses, it
also offers some free stuff that does not include certifications.
Shell Scripting is one of the most recommended free course available on Udemy for free. You can enroll in it without spending
anything.
Yet another interesting free course focused on bash shell scripting on Udemy. Compared to the previous one, this resource seems
to be more popular. So, you can enroll in it and see what it has to offer.
Not to forget that the free Udemy course does not offer any certifications. But, it's indeed an impressive free shell scripting
learning resource.
As the name suggests, the bash academy is completely focused on educating the users about bash shell.
It's suitable for both beginners and experienced users even though it does not offer a lot of content. Not just limited to the
guide -- but it also used to offer an interactive game to practice which no longer works.
Hence, if this is interesting enough, you can also check out its
GitHub page
and fork it to improve the existing resources if you want.
LinkedIn offers a number of free courses to help you improve your skills and get ready for more job opportunities. You will also
find a couple of courses focused on shell scripting to brush up some basic skills or gain some advanced knowledge in the process.
Here, I've linked a course for bash scripting, you can find some other similar courses for free as well.
An impressive advanced bash scripting guide available in the form of PDF for free. This PDF resource does not enforce any
copyrights and is completely free in the public domain.
Even though the resource is focused on providing advanced insights. It's also suitable for beginners to refer this resource and
start to learn shell scripting.
Tutorialspoint is a quite popular web portal to learn a variety of
programming languages
. I would say this is quite good for starters to learn the fundamentals and the basics.
This may not be suitable as a detailed resource -- but it should be a useful one for free.
Tutorialspoint
10. City College of San Francisco Online Notes [Web portal]
<img data-attachment-id="80382" data-permalink="https://itsfoss.com/shell-scripting-resources/scripting-notes-ccsf/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/scripting-notes-ccsf.png?fit=800%2C291&ssl=1" data-orig-size="800,291" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="scripting-notes-ccsf" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/scripting-notes-ccsf.png?fit=300%2C109&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/scripting-notes-ccsf.png?fit=800%2C291&ssl=1" src="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/scripting-notes-ccsf.png?ssl=1" alt="Scripting Notes Ccsf" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/scripting-notes-ccsf.png?w=800&ssl=1 800w, https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/scripting-notes-ccsf.png?resize=300%2C109&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/scripting-notes-ccsf.png?resize=768%2C279&ssl=1 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-recalc-dims="1" />
This may not be the best free resource there is -- but if you're ready to explore every type of resource to learn shell scripting,
why not refer to the online notes of City College of San Francisco?
I came across this with a random search on the Internet about shell scripting resources.
Again, it's important to note that the online notes could be a bit dated. But, it should be an interesting resource to explore.
City College of San Francisco Notes
Honorable mention: Linux Man Page
<img data-attachment-id="80383" data-permalink="https://itsfoss.com/shell-scripting-resources/bash-linux-man-page/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bash-linux-man-page.png?fit=800%2C437&ssl=1" data-orig-size="800,437" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="bash-linux-man-page" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bash-linux-man-page.png?fit=300%2C164&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bash-linux-man-page.png?fit=800%2C437&ssl=1" src="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bash-linux-man-page.png?ssl=1" alt="Bash Linux Man Page" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bash-linux-man-page.png?w=800&ssl=1 800w, https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bash-linux-man-page.png?resize=300%2C164&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/itsfoss.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bash-linux-man-page.png?resize=768%2C420&ssl=1 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-recalc-dims="1" />
Not to forget, the man page for bash should also be a fantastic free resource to explore more about the commands and how it
works.
Even if it's not tailored as something that lets you master shell scripting, it is still an important web resource that you can
use for free. You can either choose to visit the man page online or just head to the terminal and type the following command to get
help:
man bash
Wrapping Up
There are also a lot of popular paid resources just like some of the
best Linux books
available out there. It's easy to start learning about shell scripting using some free resources available
across the web.
In addition to the ones I've mentioned, I'm sure there must be numerous other resources available online to help you learn shell
scripting.
Do you like the resources mentioned above? Also, if you're aware of a fantastic free resource that I possibly missed, feel free
to tell me about it in the comments below.
<img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d098097d2a43d2fc1f0d31327f8288a6?s=90&d=mm&r=g' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d098097d2a43d2fc1f0d31327f8288a6?s=180&d=mm&r=g 2x' class='avatar avatar-90 photo' height='90' width='90' />
About
Ankush Das
A passionate technophile who also happens to be a Computer Science graduate. You will usually see cats dancing to the beautiful
tunes sung by him.
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The
Bash Debugger Project (bashdb)
lets you set breakpoints, inspect variables, perform a backtrace, and step through a bash
script line by line. In other words, it provides the features you expect in a C/C++ debugger to
anyone programming a bash script.
To see if your standard bash executable has bashdb support, execute the command shown below;
if you are not taken to a bashdb prompt then you'll have to install bashdb yourself.
$ bash
--debugger -c "set|grep -i dbg" ... bashdb
The Ubuntu Intrepid repository contains a package for bashdb, but there is no special
bashdb package in the openSUSE 11 or Fedora 9 repositories. I built from source using version
4.0-0.1 of bashdb on a 64-bit Fedora 9 machine, using the normal ./configure; make; sudo
make install commands.
You can start the Bash Debugger using the bash --debugger foo.sh syntax or the
bashdb foo.sh command. The former method is recommended except in cases where I/O
redirection might cause issues, and it's what I used. You can also use bashdb through
ddd or from an
Emacs buffer.
The syntax for many of the commands in bashdb mimics that of gdb, the GNU debugger. You can
step into functions, use next to execute the next line without
stepping into any functions, generate a backtrace with bt , exit bashdb with
quit or Ctrl-D, and examine a variable with print $foo . Aside from
the prefixing of the variable with $ at the end of the last sentence, there are
some other minor differences that you'll notice. For instance, pressing Enter on a blank line
in bashdb executes the previous step or next command instead of whatever the previous command
was.
The print command forces you to prefix shell variables with the dollar sign (
$foo ). A slightly shorter way of inspecting variables and functions is to use the
x
foo command, which uses declare to print variables and functions.
Both bashdb and your script run inside the same bash shell. Because bash lacks some
namespace properties, bashdb will include some functions and symbols into the global namespace
which your script can get at. bashdb prefixes its symbols with _Dbg_ , so you
should avoid that prefix in your scripts to avoid potential clashes. bashdb also uses some
environment variables; it uses the DBG_ prefix for its own, and relies on some
standard bash ones that begin with BASH_ .
To illustrate the use of bashdb, I'll work on the small bash script below, which expects a
numeric argument n and calculates the nth Fibonacci number .
#!/bin/bash
version="0.01"; fibonacci() { n=${1:?If you want the nth fibonacci number, you must supply n as
the first parameter.} if [ $n -le 1 ]; then echo $n else l=`fibonacci $((n-1))` r=`fibonacci
$((n-2))` echo $((l + r)) fi } for i in `seq 1 10` do result=$(fibonacci $i) echo "i=$i
result=$result" done
The below session shows bashdb in action, stepping over and then into the fibonacci function
and inspecting variables. I've made my input text bold for ease of reading. An initial
backtrace ( bt ) shows that the script begins at line 3, which is where the
version variable is written. The next and list commands then progress
to the next line of the script a few times and show the context of the current execution line.
After one of the next commands I press Enter to execute next again. I
invoke the examine command through the single letter shortcut x .
Notice that the variables are printed out using declare as opposed to their
display on the next line using print . Finally I set a breakpoint at the start of
the fibonacci function and continue the execution of the shell
script. The fibonacci function is called and I move to the next line
a few times and inspect a variable.
$ bash --debugger ./fibonacci.sh ...
(/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:3): 3: version="0.01"; bashdb bt ->0 in file
`./fibonacci.sh' at line 3 ##1 main() called from file `./fibonacci.sh' at line 0 bashdb
next (/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:16): 16: for i in `seq 1 10` bashdb
list 16:==>for i in `seq 1 10` 17: do 18: result=$(fibonacci $i) 19: echo "i=$i
result=$result" 20: done bashdb next (/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:18): 18:
result=$(fibonacci $i) bashdb (/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:19): 19: echo "i=$i
result=$result" bashdb x i result declare -- i="1" declare -- result="" bashdb print
$i $result 1 bashdb break fibonacci Breakpoint 1 set in file
/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh, line 5. bashdb continue Breakpoint 1 hit (1
times). (/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:5): 5: fibonacci() { bashdb next
(/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:6): 6: n=${1:?If you want the nth fibonacci number, you
must supply n as the first parameter.} bashdb next
(/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:7): 7: if [ $n -le 1 ]; then bashdb x n declare
-- n="2" bashdb quit
Notice that the number in the bashdb prompt toward the end of the above example is enclosed
in parentheses. Each set of parentheses indicates that you have entered a subshell. In this
example this is due to being inside a shell function.
In the below example I use a watchpoint to see if and where the result variable
changes. Notice the initial next command. I found that if I didn't issue that next
then my watch would fail to work. As you can see, after I issue c to continue
execution, execution is stopped whenever the result variable is about to change, and the new
and old value are displayed.
(/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:3): 3: version="0.01";
bashdb<0> next (/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:16): 16: for i in `seq 1 10`
bashdb<1> watch result 0: ($result)==0 arith: 0 bashdb<2> c
Watchpoint 0: $result changed: old value: '' new value: '1'
(/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:19): 19: echo "i=$i result=$result" bashdb<3>
c i=1 result=1 i=2 result=1 Watchpoint 0: $result changed: old value: '1' new value: '2'
(/home/ben/testing/bashdb/fibonacci.sh:19): 19: echo "i=$i result=$result"
To get around the strange initial next requirement I used the
watche command in the below session, which lets you stop whenever an expression
becomes true. In this case I'm not overly interested in the first few Fibonacci numbers so I
set a watch to have execution stop when the result is greater than 4. You can also use a
watche command without a condition; for example, watche result would
stop execution whenever the result variable changed.
When a shell script goes wrong, many folks use the time-tested method of incrementally
adding in echo or printf statements to look for invalid values or
code paths that are never reached. With bashdb, you can save yourself time by just adding a few
watches on variables or setting a few breakpoints.
One quick way to determine whether the command you are using is a bash built-in or not is to
use the command "command". Yes, the command is called "command". Try it with a -V (capital V)
option like this:
$ command -V command
command is a shell builtin
$ command -V echo
echo is a shell builtin
$ command -V date
date is hashed (/bin/date)
When you see a "command is hashed" message like the one above, that means that the command
has been put into a hash table for quicker lookup.
... ... ...How to tell what
shell you're currently using
If you switch shells you can't depend on $SHELL to tell you what shell you're currently
using because $SHELL is just an environment variable that is set when you log in and doesn't
necessarily reflect your current shell. Try ps -p $$ instead as shown in these examples:
Built-ins are extremely useful and give each shell a lot of its character. If you use some
particular shell all of the time, it's easy to lose track of which commands are part of your
shell and which are not.
Differentiating a shell built-in from a Linux executable requires only a little extra
effort.
For security reasons, it defaults to "" , which disables explainshell integration. When set, this extension will
send requests to the endpoint and displays documentation for flags.
Once https://github.com/idank/explainshell/pull/125
is merged, it would be possible to set this to "https://explainshell.com" , however doing this is not recommended as
it will leak all your shell scripts to a third party -- do this at your own risk, or better always use a locally running
Docker image.
I had to use file recovery software when I accidentally formatted my backup. It worked, but
I now have 37,000 text files with numbers where names used to be.
If I name each file with the first 20-30 characters, I can sort the text-wheat from the
bit-chaff.
I have the vague idea of using whatever the equivalent of
head
is on Windows, but that's as far as I got. I'm not so hot on bash scripting either.
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level 1
Answer: not really. The environment and script's working, but whenever
there's a forward slash or non-escaping character in the text, it chokes when it tries to set up a new
directory, and it deletes the file suffix. :-/ Good thing I used a copy of the data.
Need something to strip out the characters and spaces, and add the file
suffix, before it tries to rename.
sed
? Also needs
file
to identify it as true text. I can do the suffix at least:
for i in *; do mv $i "$(head -c 30 "$i").txt"; done
I recommend you use 'head -1', which will make the first line of the file
the filename and you won't have to worry about newlines. Then you can change the spaces to underscores with:
There's the
file
program on
*nix that'll tell you, in a verbose manner, the type of the file you give it as an argument, irregardless of
its file extension. Example:
$ file test.mp3
test.mp3: , 48 kHz, JntStereo
$ file mbr.bin
mbr.bin: data
$ file CalendarExport.ics
CalendarExport.ics: HTML document, UTF-8 Unicode text, with very long lines, with CRLF, LF line terminators
$ file jmk.doc
jmk.doc: Composite Document File V2 Document, Little Endian, Os: Windows, Version 6.0, Code page: 1250, Title: xx, Author: xx, Template: Normal, Last Saved By: xx, Revision Number: 4, Name of Creating Application: Microsoft Office Word, Total Editing Time: 2d+03:32:00, Last Printed: Fri Feb 22 11:29:00 2008, Create Time/Date: Fri Jan 4 12:57:00 2013, Last Saved Time/Date: Sun Jan 6 16:30:00 2013, Number of Pages: 6, Number of Words: 1711, Number of Characters: 11808, Security: 0
Thank you, but the software I used to recover (R-Undelete) sorted them
already. I found another program, RenameMaestro, that renames according to metadata in zip, rar, pdf, doc and
other files, but text files are too basic.
Not command line, but you could probably do this pretty easily in python,
using "glob" to get filenames, and os read and move/rename functions to get the text and change filenames.
level 1
So far, you're not getting many windows command line ideas
:(. I don't have any either, but here's an idea:
Use one of the live Linux distributions (Porteus is pretty
cool, but there're a slew of others). In that Linux environment, you can mount your Windows
hard drive, and use Linux tools, maybe something like
/u/tatumc
suggested.
r/commandline
Tired of typing the same long commands over
and over? Do you feel inefficient working on the command line? Bash aliases can make a world of
difference.
28 comments
A Bash alias is a method of supplementing or overriding Bash commands with new ones. Bash
aliases make it easy for users to customize their experience in a POSIX terminal.
They are often defined in $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/bash_aliases (which must be loaded by
$HOME/.bashrc ).
Most distributions add at least some popular aliases in the default .bashrc file of any new
user account. These are simple ones to demonstrate the syntax of a Bash alias:
alias ls =
'ls -F'
alias ll = 'ls -lh'
Not all distributions ship with pre-populated aliases, though. If you add aliases manually,
then you must load them into your current Bash session:
$ source ~/.bashrc
Otherwise, you can close your terminal and re-open it so that it reloads its configuration
file.
With those aliases defined in your Bash initialization script, you can then type ll and get
the results of ls -l , and when you type ls you get, instead of the output of plain old
ls .
Those aliases are great to have, but they just scratch the surface of what's possible. Here
are the top 10 Bash aliases that, once you try them, you won't be able to live
without.
Set up first
Before beginning, create a file called ~/.bash_aliases :
$ touch ~/.bash_aliases
Then, make sure that this code appears in your ~/.bashrc file:
if [ -e $HOME /
.bash_aliases ] ; then
source $HOME / .bash_aliases
fi
If you want to try any of the aliases in this article for yourself, enter them into your
.bash_aliases file, and then load them into your Bash session with the source ~/.bashrc
command.
Sort by file size
If you started your computing life with GUI file managers like Nautilus in GNOME, the Finder
in MacOS, or Explorer in Windows, then you're probably used to sorting a list of files by their
size. You can do that in a terminal as well, but it's not exactly succinct.
Add this alias to your configuration on a GNU system:
alias lt = 'ls --human-readable
--size -1 -S --classify'
This alias replaces lt with an ls command that displays the size of each item, and then
sorts it by size, in a single column, with a notation to indicate the kind of file. Load your
new alias, and then try it out:
In fact, even on Linux, that command is useful, because using ls lists directories and
symlinks as being 0 in size, which may not be the information you actually want. It's your
choice.
Thanks to Brad Alexander for this alias idea.
View only mounted drives
The mount command used to be so simple. With just one command, you could get a list of all
the mounted filesystems on your computer, and it was frequently used for an overview of what
drives were attached to a workstation. It used to be impressive to see more than three or four
entries because most computers don't have many more USB ports than that, so the results were
manageable.
Computers are a little more complicated now, and between LVM, physical drives, network
storage, and virtual filesystems, the results of mount can be difficult to parse:
sysfs on
/sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,seclabel)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs
(rw,nosuid,seclabel,size=8131024k,nr_inodes=2032756,mode=755)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
[...]
/dev/nvme0n1p2 on /boot type ext4 (rw,relatime,seclabel)
/dev/nvme0n1p1 on /boot/efi type vfat
(rw,relatime,fmask=0077,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=winnt,errors=remount-ro)
[...]
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/100977/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=100977,group_id=100977)
/dev/sda1 on /run/media/seth/pocket type ext4
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,seclabel,uhelper=udisks2)
/dev/sdc1 on /run/media/seth/trip type ext4
(rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,seclabel,uhelper=udisks2)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,relatime)
This alias uses awk to parse the output of mount by column, reducing the output to what you
probably looking for (what hard drives, and not file systems, are mounted):
On MacOS, the mount command doesn't provide terribly verbose output, so an alias may be
overkill. However, if you prefer a succinct report, try this:
alias mnt = 'mount | grep -E
^/dev | column -t'
The results:
$ mnt
/dev/disk1s1 on / (apfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk1s4 on /private/var/vm (apfs, local, noexec, journaled, noatime, nobrowse) Find a
command in your grep history
Sometimes you figure out how to do something in the terminal, and promise yourself that
you'll never forget what you've just learned. Then an hour goes by, and you've completely
forgotten what you did.
Searching through your Bash history is something everyone has to do from time to time. If
you know exactly what you're searching for, you can use Ctrl+R to do a reverse search through
your history, but sometimes you can't remember the exact command you want to find.
Here's an alias to make that task a little easier:
It happens every Monday: You get to work, you sit down at your computer, you open a
terminal, and you find you've forgotten what you were doing last Friday. What you need is an
alias to list the most recently modified files.
You can use the ls command to create an alias to help you find where you left off:
alias
left = 'ls -t -1'
The output is simple, although you can extend it with the -- long option if you prefer. The
alias, as listed, displays this:
$ left
demo.jpeg
demo.xcf
design-proposal.md
rejects.txt
brainstorm.txt
query-letter.xml Count files
If you need to know how many files you have in a directory, the solution is one of the most
classic examples of UNIX command construction: You list files with the ls command, control its
output to be only one column with the -1 option, and then pipe that output to the wc (word
count) command to count how many lines of single files there are.
It's a brilliant demonstration of how the UNIX philosophy allows users to build their own
solutions using small system components. This command combination is also a lot to type if you
happen to do it several times a day, and it doesn't exactly work for a directory of directories
without using the -R option, which introduces new lines to the output and renders the exercise
useless.
Instead, this alias makes the process easy:
alias count = 'find . -type f | wc -l'
This one counts files, ignoring directories, but not the contents of directories. If
you have a project folder containing two directories, each of which contains two files, the
alias returns four, because there are four files in the entire project.
$ ls
foo bar
$ count
4 Create a Python virtual environment
Do you code in Python?
Do you code in Python a lot?
If you do, then you know that creating a Python virtual environment requires, at the very
least, 53 keystrokes.
That's 49 too many, but that's easily circumvented with two new aliases called ve and va
:
alias ve = 'python3 -m venv ./venv'
alias va = 'source ./venv/bin/activate'
Running ve creates a new directory, called venv , containing the usual virtual environment
filesystem for Python3. The va alias activates the environment in your current shell:
$ cd
my-project
$ ve
$ va
(venv) $ Add a copy progress bar
Everybody pokes fun at progress bars because they're infamously inaccurate. And yet, deep
down, we all seem to want them. The UNIX cp command has no progress bar, but it does have a -v
option for verbosity, meaning that it echoes the name of each file being copied to your
terminal. That's a pretty good hack, but it doesn't work so well when you're copying one big
file and want some indication of how much of the file has yet to be transferred.
The pv command provides a progress bar during copy, but it's not common as a default
application. On the other hand, the rsync command is included in the default installation of
nearly every POSIX system available, and it's widely recognized as one of the smartest ways to
copy files both remotely and locally.
Better yet, it has a built-in progress bar.
alias cpv = 'rsync -ah --info=progress2'
Using this alias is the same as using the cp command:
An interesting side effect of using this command is that rsync copies both files and
directories without the -r flag that cp would otherwise require.
Protect yourself from
file removal accidents
You shouldn't use the rm command. The rm manual even says so:
Warning : If you use 'rm' to remove a file, it is usually possible to recover the
contents of that file. If you want more assurance that the contents are truly unrecoverable,
consider using 'shred'.
If you want to remove a file, you should move the file to your Trash, just as you do when
using a desktop.
POSIX makes this easy, because the Trash is an accessible, actual location in your
filesystem. That location may change, depending on your platform: On a FreeDesktop , the Trash is located at
~/.local/share/Trash , while on MacOS it's ~/.Trash , but either way, it's just a directory
into which you place files that you want out of sight until you're ready to erase them
forever.
This simple alias provides a way to toss files into the Trash bin from your
terminal:
alias tcn = 'mv --force -t ~/.local/share/Trash '
This alias uses a little-known mv flag that enables you to provide the file you want to move
as the final argument, ignoring the usual requirement for that file to be listed first. Now you
can use your new command to move files and folders to your system Trash:
$ ls
foo bar
$ tcn foo
$ ls
bar
Now the file is "gone," but only until you realize in a cold sweat that you still need it.
At that point, you can rescue the file from your system Trash; be sure to tip the Bash and mv
developers on the way out.
Note: If you need a more robust Trash command with better FreeDesktop compliance, see
Trashy .
Simplify your Git
workflow
Everyone has a unique workflow, but there are usually repetitive tasks no matter what. If
you work with Git on a regular basis, then there's probably some sequence you find yourself
repeating pretty frequently. Maybe you find yourself going back to the master branch and
pulling the latest changes over and over again during the day, or maybe you find yourself
creating tags and then pushing them to the remote, or maybe it's something else entirely.
No matter what Git incantation you've grown tired of typing, you may be able to alleviate
some pain with a Bash alias. Largely thanks to its ability to pass arguments to hooks, Git has
a rich set of introspective commands that save you from having to perform uncanny feats in
Bash.
For instance, while you might struggle to locate, in Bash, a project's top-level directory
(which, as far as Bash is concerned, is an entirely arbitrary designation, since the absolute
top level to a computer is the root directory), Git knows its top level with a simple query. If
you study up on Git hooks, you'll find yourself able to find out all kinds of information that
Bash knows nothing about, but you can leverage that information with a Bash alias.
Here's an alias to find the top level of a Git project, no matter where in that project you
are currently working, and then to change directory to it, change to the master branch, and
perform a Git pull:
This kind of alias is by no means a universally useful alias, but it demonstrates how a
relatively simple alias can eliminate a lot of laborious navigation, commands, and waiting for
prompts.
A simpler, and probably more universal, alias returns you to the Git project's top level.
This alias is useful because when you're working on a project, that project more or less
becomes your "temporary home" directory. It should be as simple to go "home" as it is to go to
your actual home, and here's an alias to do it:
alias cg = 'cd `git rev-parse
--show-toplevel`'
Now the command cg takes you to the top of your Git project, no matter how deep into its
directory structure you have descended.
Change directories and view the contents at the
same time
It was once (allegedly) proposed by a leading scientist that we could solve many of the
planet's energy problems by harnessing the energy expended by geeks typing cd followed by ls
.
It's a common pattern, because generally when you change directories, you have the impulse or
the need to see what's around.
But "walking" your computer's directory tree doesn't have to be a start-and-stop
process.
This one's cheating, because it's not an alias at all, but it's a great excuse to explore
Bash functions. While aliases are great for quick substitutions, Bash allows you to add local
functions in your .bashrc file (or a separate functions file that you load into .bashrc , just
as you do your aliases file).
To keep things modular, create a new file called ~/.bash_functions and then have your
.bashrc load it:
if [ -e $HOME / .bash_functions ] ; then
source $HOME / .bash_functions
fi
In the functions file, add this code:
function cl () {
DIR = "$*" ;
# if no DIR given, go home
if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then
DIR = $HOME ;
fi ;
builtin cd " ${DIR} " && \
# use your preferred ls command
ls -F --color =auto
}
Load the function into your Bash session and then try it out:
Functions are much more flexible than aliases, but with that flexibility comes the
responsibility for you to ensure that your code makes sense and does what you expect. Aliases
are meant to be simple, so keep them easy, but useful. For serious modifications to how Bash
behaves, use functions or custom shell scripts saved to a location in your PATH .
For the record, there are some clever hacks to implement the cd and ls sequence as an
alias, so if you're patient enough, then the sky is the limit even using humble
aliases.
Start aliasing and functioning
Customizing your environment is what makes Linux fun, and increasing your efficiency is what
makes Linux life-changing. Get started with simple aliases, graduate to functions, and post
your must-have aliases in the comments!
My backup tool of choice (rdiff-backup) handles these sorts of comparisons pretty well, so
I tend to be confident in my backup files. That said, there's always the edge case, and this
kind of function is a great solution for those. Thanks!
A few of my "cannot-live-withouts" are regex based:
Decomment removes full-line comments and blank lines. For example, when looking at a
"stock" /etc/httpd/whatever.conf file that has a gazillion lines in it,
alias decomment='egrep -v "^[[:space:]]*((#|;|//).*)?$" '
will show you that only four lines in the file actually DO anything, and the gazillion
minus four are comments. I use this ALL the time with config files, Python (and other
languages) code, and god knows where else.
Then there's unprintables and expletives which are both very similar:
alias unprintable='grep --color="auto" -P -n "[\x00-\x1E]"'
alias expletives='grep --color="auto" -P -n "[^\x00-\x7E]" '
The first shows which lines (with line numbers) in a file contain control characters, and
the second shows which lines in a file contain anything "above" a RUBOUT, er, excuse me, I
mean above ASCII 127. (I feel old.) ;-) Handy when, for example, someone gives you a program
that they edited or created with LibreOffice, and oops... half of the quoted strings have
"real" curly opening and closing quote marks instead of ASCII 0x22 "straight" quote mark
delimiters... But there's actually a few curlies you want to keep, so a "nuke 'em all in one
swell foop" approach won't work.
Thanks for this post! I have created a Github repo- https://github.com/bhuvana-guna/awesome-bash-shortcuts
with a motive to create an extended list of aliases/functions for various programs. As I am a
newbie to terminal and linux, please do contribute to it with these and other super awesome
utilities and help others easily access them.
Your Linux terminal probably supports Unicode, so why not take advantage of that and add
a seasonal touch to your prompt? 11 Dec 2018 Jason Baker (Red Hat) Feed 84
up 3 comments Image credits : Jason Baker x Subscribe now
Hello once again for another installment of the Linux command-line toys advent calendar. If
this is your first visit to the series, you might be asking yourself what a command-line toy
even is? Really, we're keeping it pretty open-ended: It's anything that's a fun diversion at
the terminal, and we're giving bonus points for anything holiday-themed.
Maybe you've seen some of these before, maybe you haven't. Either way, we hope you have
fun.
Today's toy is super-simple: It's your Bash prompt. Your Bash prompt? Yep! We've got a few
more weeks of the holiday season left to stare at it, and even more weeks of winter here in the
northern hemisphere, so why not have some fun with it.
Your Bash prompt currently might be a simple dollar sign ( $ ), or more likely, it's
something a little longer. If you're not sure what makes up your Bash prompt right now, you can
find it in an environment variable called $PS1. To see it, type:
echo $PS1
For me, this returns:
[\u@\h \W]\$
The \u , \h , and \W are special characters for username, hostname, and working directory.
There are others you can use as well; for help building out your Bash prompt, you can use
EzPrompt , an online generator of PS1
configurations that includes lots of options including date and time, Git status, and more.
You may have other variables that make up your Bash prompt set as well; $PS2 for me contains
the closing brace of my command prompt. See this article for more information.
To change your prompt, simply set the environment variable in your terminal like this:
$
PS1 = '\u is cold: '
jehb is cold:
To set it permanently, add the same code to your /etc/bashrc using your favorite text
editor.
So what does this have to do with winterization? Well, chances are on a modern machine, your
terminal support Unicode, so you're not limited to the standard ASCII character set. You can
use any emoji that's a part of the Unicode specification, including a snowflake ❄, a
snowman ☃, or a pair of skis 🎿. You've got plenty of wintery options to choose
from.
🎄 Christmas Tree
🧥 Coat
🦌 Deer
🧤 Gloves
🤶 Mrs. Claus
🎅 Santa Claus
🧣 Scarf
🎿 Skis
🏂 Snowboarder
❄ Snowflake
☃ Snowman
⛄ Snowman Without Snow
🎁 Wrapped Gift
Pick your favorite, and enjoy some winter cheer. Fun fact: modern filesystems also support
Unicode characters in their filenames, meaning you can technically name your next program
"❄❄❄❄❄.py" . That said, please don't.
Do you have a favorite command-line toy that you think I ought to include? The calendar for
this series is mostly filled out but I've got a few spots left. Let me know in the comments
below, and I'll check it out. If there's space, I'll try to include it. If not, but I get some
good submissions, I'll do a round-up of honorable mentions at the end.
**PS1** - The value of this parameter is expanded and used as the primary prompt string. The default value is \u@\h \W\\$ .
**PS2** - The value of this parameter is expanded as with PS1 and used as the secondary prompt string. The default is ]
**PS3** - The value of this parameter is used as the prompt for the select command
**PS4** - The value of this parameter is expanded as with PS1 and the value is printed before each command bash displays during an execution trace. The first character of PS4 is replicated multiple times, as necessary, to indicate multiple levels of indirection. The default is +
PS1
is a primary prompt variable which holds
\u@\h \W\\$
special bash
characters. This is the default structure of the bash prompt and is displayed every time a user logs in
using a terminal. These default values are set in the
/etc/bashrc
file.
The special characters in the default prompt are as follows:
This solution is part of Red Hat's fast-track publication program, providing a huge library of solutions
that Red Hat engineers have created while supporting our customers. To give you the knowledge you need the
instant it becomes available, these articles may be presented in a raw and unedited form.
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MW
Community Member
48
points
# It's NOT a good idea to change this file unless you know what you
# are doing. It's much better to create a custom.sh shell script in
# /etc/profile.d/ to make custom changes to your environment, as this
# will prevent the need for merging in future updates.
On RHEL 7 instead of the solution suggested above create a /etc/profile.d/custom.sh which
contains
Hello Red Hat community! I also found this useful:
Raw
Special prompt variable characters:
\d The date, in "Weekday Month Date" format (e.g., "Tue May 26").
\h The hostname, up to the first . (e.g. deckard)
\H The hostname. (e.g. deckard.SS64.com)
\j The number of jobs currently managed by the shell.
\l The basename of the shell's terminal device name.
\s The name of the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion following
the final slash).
\t The time, in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format.
\T The time, in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format.
\@ The time, in 12-hour am/pm format.
\u The username of the current user.
\v The version of Bash (e.g., 2.00)
\V The release of Bash, version + patchlevel (e.g., 2.00.0)
\w The current working directory.
\W The basename of $PWD.
\! The history number of this command.
\# The command number of this command.
\$ If you are not root, inserts a "$"; if you are root, you get a "#" (root uid = 0)
\nnn The character whose ASCII code is the octal value nnn.
\n A newline.
\r A carriage return.
\e An escape character (typically a color code).
\a A bell character.
\\ A backslash.
\[ Begin a sequence of non-printing characters. (like color escape sequences). This
allows bash to calculate word wrapping correctly.
\] End a sequence of non-printing characters.
Using single quotes instead of double quotes when exporting your PS variables is recommended, it makes the prompt a tiny bit faster to evaluate plus you can then do an echo $PS1 to see the current prompt settings.
To explain the above, I'm builidng my bash prompt by executing a function stored in a
string, which was a decision made as the result of
this question . Let's pretend like it works fine, because it does, except when unicode
characters get involved
I am trying to find the proper way to escape a unicode character, because right now it
messes with the bash line length. An easy way to test if it's broken is to type a long
command, execute it, press CTRL-R and type to find it, and then pressing CTRL-A CTRL-E to
jump to the beginning / end of the line. If the text gets garbled then it's not working.
I have tried several things to properly escape the unicode character in the function
string, but nothing seems to be working.
Which is the main reason I made the prompt a function string. That escape sequence does
NOT mess with the line length, it's just the unicode character.
The \[...\] sequence says to ignore this part of the string completely, which is
useful when your prompt contains a zero-length sequence, such as a control sequence which
changes the text color or the title bar, say. But in this case, you are printing a character,
so the length of it is not zero. Perhaps you could work around this by, say, using a no-op
escape sequence to fool Bash into calculating the correct line length, but it sounds like
that way lies madness.
The correct solution would be for the line length calculations in Bash to correctly grok
UTF-8 (or whichever Unicode encoding it is that you are using). Uhm, have you tried without
the \[...\] sequence?
Edit: The following implements the solution I propose in the comments below. The cursor
position is saved, then two spaces are printed, outside of \[...\] , then the
cursor position is restored, and the Unicode character is printed on top of the two spaces.
This assumes a fixed font width, with double width for the Unicode character.
PS1='\['"`tput sc`"'\] \['"`tput rc`"'༇ \] \$ '
At least in the OSX Terminal, Bash 3.2.17(1)-release, this passes cursory [sic]
testing.
In the interest of transparency and legibility, I have ignored the requirement to have the
prompt's functionality inside a function, and the color coding; this just changes the prompt
to the character, space, dollar prompt, space. Adapt to suit your somewhat more complex
needs.
The trick as pointed out in @tripleee's link is the use of the commands tput
sc and tput rc which save and then restore the cursor position. The code
is effectively saving the cursor position, printing two spaces for width, restoring the
cursor position to before the spaces, then printing the special character so that the width
of the line is from the two spaces, not the character.
> ,
(Not the answer to your problem, but some pointers and general experience related to your
issue.)
I see the behaviour you describe about cmd-line editing (Ctrl-R, ... Cntrl-A Ctrl-E ...)
all the time, even without unicode chars.
At one work-site, I spent the time to figure out the diff between the terminals
interpretation of the TERM setting VS the TERM definition used by the OS (well, stty I
suppose).
NOW, when I have this problem, I escape out of my current attempt to edit the line, bring
the line up again, and then immediately go to the 'vi' mode, which opens the vi editor.
(press just the 'v' char, right?). All the ease of use of a full-fledged session of vi; why
go with less ;-)?
Looking again at your problem description, when you say
That is just a string definition, right? and I'm assuming your simplifying the problem
definition by assuming this is the output of your my_function . It seems very
likely in the steps of creating the function definition, calling the function AND using the
values returned are a lot of opportunities for shell-quoting to not work the way you want it
to.
If you edit your question to include the my_function definition, and its
complete use (reducing your function to just what is causing the problem), it may be easier
for others to help with this too. Finally, do you use set -vx regularly? It can
help show how/wnen/what of variable expansions, you may find something there.
Failing all of those, look at Orielly termcap & terminfo
. You may need to look at the man page for your local systems stty and related
cmds AND you may do well to look for user groups specific to you Linux system (I'm assuming
you use a Linux variant).
$ find . -size +10M -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -Ssh | sort -z
For those wondering, the above command will find and list files bigger than 10 MB in the
current directory and sort them by size. I admit that I couldn't remember this command. I guess
some of you can't remember this command either. This is why we are going to apply a tag to such
kind of commands.
To apply a tag, just type the command and add the comment ( i.e. tag) at the end of the
command as shown below.
$ find . -size +10M -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -Ssh | sort -z #ListFilesBiggerThanXSize
Here, #ListFilesBiggerThanXSize is the tag name to the above command. Make sure you have
given a space between the command and tag name. Also, please use the tag name as simple, short
and clear as possible to easily remember it later. Otherwise, you may need another tool to
recall the tags.
To run it again, simply use the tag name like below.
$ !? #ListFilesBiggerThanXSize
Here, the ! (Exclamation mark) and ? (Question mark) operators are used to fetch and run the
command which we tagged earlier from the BASH history.
Given a filename in the form
someletters_12345_moreleters.ext
, I want to extract the 5
digits and put them into a variable.
So to emphasize the point, I have a filename with x number of
characters then a five digit sequence surrounded by a single underscore on either side then another
set of x number of characters. I want to take the 5 digit number and put that into a variable.
I am very interested in the number of different ways that this can be accomplished.
If
x
is constant, the following parameter expansion performs substring extraction:
b=${a:12:5}
where
12
is the offset (zero-based) and
5
is the length
If the underscores around the digits are the only ones in the input, you can strip off the
prefix and suffix (respectively) in two steps:
tmp=${a#*_} # remove prefix ending in "_"
b=${tmp%_*} # remove suffix starting with "_"
If there are other underscores, it's probably feasible anyway, albeit more tricky. If anyone
knows how to perform both expansions in a single expression, I'd like to know too.
Both solutions presented are pure bash, with no process spawning involved, hence very fast.
In case someone wants more rigorous information, you can also search it in man bash like this
$ man bash [press return key]
/substring [press return key]
[press "n" key]
[press "n" key]
[press "n" key]
[press "n" key]
Result:
${parameter:offset}
${parameter:offset:length}
Substring Expansion. Expands to up to length characters of
parameter starting at the character specified by offset. If
length is omitted, expands to the substring of parameter start‐
ing at the character specified by offset. length and offset are
arithmetic expressions (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION below). If
offset evaluates to a number less than zero, the value is used
as an offset from the end of the value of parameter. Arithmetic
expressions starting with a - must be separated by whitespace
from the preceding : to be distinguished from the Use Default
Values expansion. If length evaluates to a number less than
zero, and parameter is not @ and not an indexed or associative
array, it is interpreted as an offset from the end of the value
of parameter rather than a number of characters, and the expan‐
sion is the characters between the two offsets. If parameter is
@, the result is length positional parameters beginning at off‐
set. If parameter is an indexed array name subscripted by @ or
*, the result is the length members of the array beginning with
${parameter[offset]}. A negative offset is taken relative to
one greater than the maximum index of the specified array. Sub‐
string expansion applied to an associative array produces unde‐
fined results. Note that a negative offset must be separated
from the colon by at least one space to avoid being confused
with the :- expansion. Substring indexing is zero-based unless
the positional parameters are used, in which case the indexing
starts at 1 by default. If offset is 0, and the positional
parameters are used, $0 is prefixed to the list.
Note: the above is a regular expression and is restricted to your specific scenario of five
digits surrounded by underscores. Change the regular expression if you need different matching.
I have a filename with x number of characters then a five digit sequence surrounded by a
single underscore on either side then another set of x number of characters. I want to take
the 5 digit number and put that into a variable.
Here's a prefix-suffix solution (similar to the solutions given by JB and Darron) that matches
the first block of digits and does not depend on the surrounding underscores:
str='someletters_12345_morele34ters.ext'
s1="${str#"${str%%[[:digit:]]*}"}" # strip off non-digit prefix from str
s2="${s1%%[^[:digit:]]*}" # strip off non-digit suffix from s1
echo "$s2" # 12345
A slightly more general option would be
not
to assume that you have an
underscore
_
marking the start of your digits sequence, hence for instance stripping
off all non-numbers you get before your sequence:
s/[^0-9]\+\([0-9]\+\).*/\1/p
.
> man sed | grep s/regexp/replacement -A 2
s/regexp/replacement/
Attempt to match regexp against the pattern space. If successful, replace that portion matched with replacement. The replacement may contain the special character & to
refer to that portion of the pattern space which matched, and the special escapes \1 through \9 to refer to the corresponding matching sub-expressions in the regexp.
More on this, in case you're not too confident with regexps:
s
is for _s_ubstitute
[0-9]+
matches 1+ digits
\1
links to the group n.1 of the regex output (group 0 is the whole match,
group 1 is the match within parentheses in this case)
p
flag is for _p_rinting
All escapes
\
are there to make
sed
's regexp processing work.
This will be more efficient if you want to extract something that has any chars like
abc
or any special characters like
_
or
-
. For example: If your string is
like this and you want everything that is after
someletters_
and before
_moreleters.ext
:
str="someletters_123-45-24a&13b-1_moreleters.ext"
With my code you can mention what exactly you want. Explanation:
#*
It will remove the preceding string including the matching key. Here the key
we mentioned is
_
%
It will remove the following string including the
matching key. Here the key we mentioned is '_more*'
Do some experiments yourself and you would find this interesting.
Ok, here goes pure Parameter Substitution with an empty string. Caveat is that I have defined
someletters
and
moreletters
as only characters. If they are
alphanumeric, this will not work as it is.
Can anyone recommend a safe solution to recursively replace spaces with underscores in file
and directory names starting from a given root directory? For example:
$ tree
.
|-- a dir
| `-- file with spaces.txt
`-- b dir
|-- another file with spaces.txt
`-- yet another file with spaces.pdf
Use rename (aka prename ) which is a Perl script
which may be on
your system already. Do it in two steps:
find -name "* *" -type d | rename 's/ /_/g' # do the directories first
find -name "* *" -type f | rename 's/ /_/g'
Based on Jürgen's answer and able to handle multiple layers of files and directories
in a single bound using the "Revision 1.5 1998/12/18 16:16:31 rmb1" version of
/usr/bin/rename (a Perl script):
This one does a little bit more. I use it to rename my downloaded torrents (no special
characters (non-ASCII), spaces, multiple dots, etc.).
#!/usr/bin/perl
&rena(`find . -type d`);
&rena(`find . -type f`);
sub rena
{
($elems)=@_;
@t=split /\n/,$elems;
for $e (@t)
{
$_=$e;
# remove ./ of find
s/^\.\///;
# non ascii transliterate
tr [\200-\377][_];
tr [\000-\40][_];
# special characters we do not want in paths
s/[ \-\,\;\?\+\'\"\!\[\]\(\)\@\#]/_/g;
# multiple dots except for extension
while (/\..*\./)
{
s/\./_/;
}
# only one _ consecutive
s/_+/_/g;
next if ($_ eq $e ) or ("./$_" eq $e);
print "$e -> $_\n";
rename ($e,$_);
}
}
I just make one for my own purpose. You may can use it as reference.
#!/bin/bash
cd /vzwhome/c0cheh1/dev_source/UB_14_8
for file in *
do
echo $file
cd "/vzwhome/c0cheh1/dev_source/UB_14_8/$file/Configuration/$file"
echo "==> `pwd`"
for subfile in *\ *; do [ -d "$subfile" ] && ( mv "$subfile" "$(echo $subfile | sed -e 's/ /_/g')" ); done
ls
cd /vzwhome/c0cheh1/dev_source/UB_14_8
done
for i in `IFS="";find /files -name *\ *`
do
echo $i
done > /tmp/list
while read line
do
mv "$line" `echo $line | sed 's/ /_/g'`
done < /tmp/list
rm /tmp/list
The Bash options for debugging are turned off by default, but once they are turned on by
using the set command, they stay on until explicitly turned off. If you are not sure which
options are enabled, you can examine the $- variable to see the current state of
all the variables.
$ echo $-
himBHs
$ set -xv && echo $-
himvxBHs
There is another useful switch we can use to help us find variables referenced without
having any value set. This is the -u switch, and just like -x and
-v it can also be used on the command line, as we see in the following
example:
We mistakenly assigned a value of 7 to the variable called "level" then tried to echo a
variable named "score" that simply resulted in printing nothing at all to the screen.
Absolutely no debug information was given. Setting our -u switch allows us to see
a specific error message, "score: unbound variable" that indicates exactly what went wrong.
We can use those options in short Bash scripts to give us debug information to identify
problems that do not otherwise trigger feedback from the Bash interpreter. Let's walk through a
couple of examples.
#!/bin/bash
read -p "Path to be added: " $path
if [ "$path" = "/home/mike/bin" ]; then
echo $path >> $PATH
echo "new path: $PATH"
else
echo "did not modify PATH"
fi
In the example above we run the addpath script normally and it simply does not modify our
PATH . It does not give us any indication of why or clues to mistakes made.
Running it again using the -x option clearly shows us that the left side of our
comparison is an empty string. $path is an empty string because we accidentally
put a dollar sign in front of "path" in our read statement. Sometimes we look right at a
mistake like this and it doesn't look wrong until we get a clue and think, "Why is
$path evaluated to an empty string?"
Looking this next example, we also get no indication of an error from the interpreter. We
only get one value printed per line instead of two. This is not an error that will halt
execution of the script, so we're left to simply wonder without being given any clues. Using
the -u switch,we immediately get a notification that our variable j
is not bound to a value. So these are real time savers when we make mistakes that do not result
in actual errors from the Bash interpreter's point of view.
Now surely you are thinking that sounds fine, but we seldom need help debugging mistakes
made in one-liners at the command line or in short scripts like these. We typically struggle
with debugging when we deal with longer and more complicated scripts, and we rarely need to set
these options and leave them set while we run multiple scripts. Setting -xv
options and then running a more complex script will often add confusion by doubling or tripling
the amount of output generated.
Fortunately we can use these options in a more precise way by placing them inside our
scripts. Instead of explicitly invoking a Bash shell with an option from the command line, we
can set an option by adding it to the shebang line instead.
#!/bin/bash -x
This will set the -x option for the entire file or until it is unset during the
script execution, allowing you to simply run the script by typing the filename instead of
passing it to Bash as a parameter. A long script or one that has a lot of output will still
become unwieldy using this technique however, so let's look at a more specific way to use
options.
For a more targeted approach, surround only the suspicious blocks of code with the options
you want. This approach is great for scripts that generate menus or detailed output, and it is
accomplished by using the set keyword with plus or minus once again.
#!/bin/bash
read -p "Path to be added: " $path
set -xv
if [ "$path" = "/home/mike/bin" ]; then
echo $path >> $PATH
echo "new path: $PATH"
else
echo "did not modify PATH"
fi
set +xv
We surrounded only the blocks of code we suspect in order to reduce the output, making our
task easier in the process. Notice we turn on our options only for the code block containing
our if-then-else statement, then turn off the option(s) at the end of the suspect block. We can
turn these options on and off multiple times in a single script if we can't narrow down the
suspicious areas, or if we want to evaluate the state of variables at various points as we
progress through the script. There is no need to turn off an option If we want it to continue
for the remainder of the script execution.
For completeness sake we should mention also that there are debuggers written by third
parties that will allow us to step through the code execution line by line. You might want to
investigate these tools, but most people find that that they are not actually needed.
As seasoned programmers will suggest, if your code is too complex to isolate suspicious
blocks with these options then the real problem is that the code should be refactored. Overly
complex code means bugs can be difficult to detect and maintenance can be time consuming and
costly.
One final thing to mention regarding Bash debugging options is that a file globbing option
also exists and is set with -f . Setting this option will turn off globbing
(expansion of wildcards to generate file names) while it is enabled. This -f
option can be a switch used at the command line with bash, after the shebang in a file or, as
in this example to surround a block of code.
#!/bin/bash
echo "ignore fileglobbing option turned off"
ls *
echo "ignore file globbing option set"
set -f
ls *
set +f
There are more involved techniques worth considering if your scripts are complicated,
including using an assert function as mentioned earlier. One such method to keep in mind is the
use of trap. Shell scripts allow us to trap signals and do something at that point.
A simple but useful example you can use in your Bash scripts is to trap on EXIT
.
#!/bin/bash
trap 'echo score is $score, status is $status' EXIT
if [ -z ]; then
status="default"
else
status=
fi
score=0
if [ ${USER} = 'superman' ]; then
score=99
elif [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
score=
fi
As you can see just dumping the current values of variables to the screen can be useful to
show where your logic is failing. The EXIT signal obviously does not need an
explicit exit statement to be generated; in this case the echo
statement is executed when the end of the script is reached.
Another useful trap to use with Bash scripts is DEBUG . This happens after
every statement, so it can be used as a brute force way to show the values of variables at each
step in the script execution.
#!/bin/bash
trap 'echo "line ${LINENO}: score is $score"' DEBUG
score=0
if [ "${USER}" = "mike" ]; then
let "score += 1"
fi
let "score += 1"
if [ "" = "7" ]; then
score=7
fi
exit 0
When you notice your Bash script not behaving as expected and the reason is not clear to you
for whatever reason, consider what information would be useful to help you identify the cause
then use the most comfortable tools available to help you pinpoint the issue. The xtrace option
-x is easy to use and probably the most useful of the options presented here, so
consider trying it out next time you're faced with a script that's not doing what you thought
it would
If you want to match the pattern regardless of it's case (Capital letters or lowercase
letters) you can set the nocasematch shell option with the shopt builtin. You can do
this as the first line of your script. Since the script will run in a subshell it won't effect
your normal environment.
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nocasematch
read -p "Name a Star Trek character: " CHAR
case $CHAR in
"Seven of Nine" | Neelix | Chokotay | Tuvok | Janeway )
echo "$CHAR was in Star Trek Voyager"
;;&
Archer | Phlox | Tpol | Tucker )
echo "$CHAR was in Star Trek Enterprise"
;;&
Odo | Sisko | Dax | Worf | Quark )
echo "$CHAR was in Star Trek Deep Space Nine"
;;&
Worf | Data | Riker | Picard )
echo "$CHAR was in Star Trek The Next Generation" && echo "/etc/redhat-release"
;;
*) echo "$CHAR is not in this script."
;;
esac
Is there any directory bookmarking utility for bash to allow move around faster on the command
line?
UPDATE
Thanks guys for the feedback however I created my own simple shell script (feel free to modify/expand
it)
function cdb() {
USAGE="Usage: cdb [-c|-g|-d|-l] [bookmark]" ;
if [ ! -e ~/.cd_bookmarks ] ; then
mkdir ~/.cd_bookmarks
fi
case $1 in
# create bookmark
-c) shift
if [ ! -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
echo "cd `pwd`" > ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1" ;
else
echo "Try again! Looks like there is already a bookmark '$1'"
fi
;;
# goto bookmark
-g) shift
if [ -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
source ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1"
else
echo "Mmm...looks like your bookmark has spontaneously combusted. What I mean to say is that your bookmark does not exist." ;
fi
;;
# delete bookmark
-d) shift
if [ -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
rm ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1" ;
else
echo "Oops, forgot to specify the bookmark" ;
fi
;;
# list bookmarks
-l) shift
ls -l ~/.cd_bookmarks/ ;
;;
*) echo "$USAGE" ;
;;
esac
}
INSTALL
1./ create a file ~/.cdb and copy the above script into it.
A colon-separated list of search paths available to the cd command, similar in function to
the $PATH variable for binaries. The $CDPATH variable may be set in the local ~/.bashrc file.
ash$ cd bash-doc
bash: cd: bash-doc: No such file or directory
bash$ CDPATH=/usr/share/doc
bash$ cd bash-doc
/usr/share/doc/bash-doc
bash$ echo $PWD
/usr/share/doc/bash-doc
and
cd -
It's the command-line equivalent of the back button (takes you to the previous directory you
were in).
It primarily allows you to "fuzzy-find" files in a number of ways, but it also allows to feed
arbitrary text data to it and filter this data. So, the shortcuts idea is simple: all we need
is to maintain a file with paths (which are shortcuts), and fuzzy-filter this file. Here's how
it looks: we type cdg command (from "cd global", if you like), get a list of our
bookmarks, pick the needed one in just a few keystrokes, and press Enter. Working directory is
changed to the picked item:
It is extremely fast and convenient: usually I just type 3-4 letters of the needed item, and
all others are already filtered out. Additionally, of course we can move through list with arrow
keys or with vim-like keybindings Ctrl+j / Ctrl+k .
It is possible to use it for GUI applications as well (via xterm): I use that for my GUI file
manager Double Commander . I have
plans to write an article about this use case, too.
Inspired by the question and answers here, I added the lines below to my ~/.bashrc
file.
With this you have a favdir command (function) to manage your favorites and a
autocompletion function to select an item from these favorites.
# ---------
# Favorites
# ---------
__favdirs_storage=~/.favdirs
__favdirs=( "$HOME" )
containsElement () {
local e
for e in "${@:2}"; do [[ "$e" == "$1" ]] && return 0; done
return 1
}
function favdirs() {
local cur
local IFS
local GLOBIGNORE
case $1 in
list)
echo "favorite folders ..."
printf -- ' - %s\n' "${__favdirs[@]}"
;;
load)
if [[ ! -e $__favdirs_storage ]] ; then
favdirs save
fi
# mapfile requires bash 4 / my OS-X bash vers. is 3.2.53 (from 2007 !!?!).
# mapfile -t __favdirs < $__favdirs_storage
IFS=$'\r\n' GLOBIGNORE='*' __favdirs=($(< $__favdirs_storage))
;;
save)
printf -- '%s\n' "${__favdirs[@]}" > $__favdirs_storage
;;
add)
cur=${2-$(pwd)}
favdirs load
if containsElement "$cur" "${__favdirs[@]}" ; then
echo "'$cur' allready exists in favorites"
else
__favdirs+=( "$cur" )
favdirs save
echo "'$cur' added to favorites"
fi
;;
del)
cur=${2-$(pwd)}
favdirs load
local i=0
for fav in ${__favdirs[@]}; do
if [ "$fav" = "$cur" ]; then
echo "delete '$cur' from favorites"
unset __favdirs[$i]
favdirs save
break
fi
let i++
done
;;
*)
echo "Manage favorite folders."
echo ""
echo "usage: favdirs [ list | load | save | add | del ]"
echo ""
echo " list : list favorite folders"
echo " load : load favorite folders from $__favdirs_storage"
echo " save : save favorite directories to $__favdirs_storage"
echo " add : add directory to favorites [default pwd $(pwd)]."
echo " del : delete directory from favorites [default pwd $(pwd)]."
esac
} && favdirs load
function __favdirs_compl_command() {
COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W "list load save add del" -- ${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}))
} && complete -o default -F __favdirs_compl_command favdirs
function __favdirs_compl() {
local IFS=$'\n'
COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W "${__favdirs[*]}" -- ${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}))
}
alias _cd='cd'
complete -F __favdirs_compl _cd
Within the last two lines, an alias to change the current directory (with autocompletion) is
created. With this alias ( _cd ) you are able to change to one of your favorite directories.
May you wan't to change this alias to something which fits your needs .
With the function favdirs you can manage your favorites (see usage).
$ favdirs
Manage favorite folders.
usage: favdirs [ list | load | save | add | del ]
list : list favorite folders
load : load favorite folders from ~/.favdirs
save : save favorite directories to ~/.favdirs
add : add directory to favorites [default pwd /tmp ].
del : delete directory from favorites [default pwd /tmp ].
@getmizanur I used your cdb script. I enhanced it slightly by adding bookmarks tab completion.
Here's my version of your cdb script.
_cdb()
{
local _script_commands=$(ls -1 ~/.cd_bookmarks/)
local cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${_script_commands}" -- $cur) )
}
complete -F _cdb cdb
function cdb() {
local USAGE="Usage: cdb [-h|-c|-d|-g|-l|-s] [bookmark]\n
\t[-h or no args] - prints usage help\n
\t[-c bookmark] - create bookmark\n
\t[-d bookmark] - delete bookmark\n
\t[-g bookmark] - goto bookmark\n
\t[-l] - list bookmarks\n
\t[-s bookmark] - show bookmark location\n
\t[bookmark] - same as [-g bookmark]\n
Press tab for bookmark completion.\n"
if [ ! -e ~/.cd_bookmarks ] ; then
mkdir ~/.cd_bookmarks
fi
case $1 in
# create bookmark
-c) shift
if [ ! -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
echo "cd `pwd`" > ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1"
complete -F _cdb cdb
else
echo "Try again! Looks like there is already a bookmark '$1'"
fi
;;
# goto bookmark
-g) shift
if [ -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
source ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1"
else
echo "Mmm...looks like your bookmark has spontaneously combusted. What I mean to say is that your bookmark does not exist." ;
fi
;;
# show bookmark
-s) shift
if [ -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
cat ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1"
else
echo "Mmm...looks like your bookmark has spontaneously combusted. What I mean to say is that your bookmark does not exist." ;
fi
;;
# delete bookmark
-d) shift
if [ -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
rm ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1" ;
else
echo "Oops, forgot to specify the bookmark" ;
fi
;;
# list bookmarks
-l) shift
ls -1 ~/.cd_bookmarks/ ;
;;
-h) echo -e $USAGE ;
;;
# goto bookmark by default
*)
if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
echo -e $USAGE
elif [ -f ~/.cd_bookmarks/$1 ] ; then
source ~/.cd_bookmarks/"$1"
else
echo "Mmm...looks like your bookmark has spontaneously combusted. What I mean to say is that your bookmark does not exist." ;
fi
;;
esac
}
Anc stands for anchor, but anc's anchors are really just bookmarks.
It's designed for ease of use and there're multiple ways of navigating, either by giving a
text pattern, using numbers, interactively, by going back, or using [TAB] completion.
I'm actively working on it and open to input on how to make it better.
Allow me to paste the examples from anc's github page here:
# make the current directory the default anchor:
$ anc s
# go to /etc, then /, then /usr/local and then back to the default anchor:
$ cd /etc; cd ..; cd usr/local; anc
# go back to /usr/local :
$ anc b
# add another anchor:
$ anc a $HOME/test
# view the list of anchors (the default one has the asterisk):
$ anc l
(0) /path/to/first/anchor *
(1) /home/usr/test
# jump to the anchor we just added:
# by using its anchor number
$ anc 1
# or by jumping to the last anchor in the list
$ anc -1
# add multiple anchors:
$ anc a $HOME/projects/first $HOME/projects/second $HOME/documents/first
# use text matching to jump to $HOME/projects/first
$ anc pro fir
# use text matching to jump to $HOME/documents/first
$ anc doc fir
# add anchor and jump to it using an absolute path
$ anc /etc
# is the same as
$ anc a /etc; anc -1
# add anchor and jump to it using a relative path
$ anc ./X11 #note that "./" is required for relative paths
# is the same as
$ anc a X11; anc -1
# using wildcards you can add many anchors at once
$ anc a $HOME/projects/*
# use shell completion to see a list of matching anchors
# and select the one you want to jump to directly
$ anc pro[TAB]
Bashmarks
is an amazingly simple and intuitive utility. In short, after installation, the usage is:
s <bookmark_name> - Saves the current directory as "bookmark_name"
g <bookmark_name> - Goes (cd) to the directory associated with "bookmark_name"
p <bookmark_name> - Prints the directory associated with "bookmark_name"
d <bookmark_name> - Deletes the bookmark
l - Lists all available bookmarks
,
For short term shortcuts, I have a the following in my respective init script (Sorry. I can't
find the source right now and didn't bother then):
function b() {
alias $1="cd `pwd -P`"
}
Usage:
In any directory that you want to bookmark type
b THEDIR # <THEDIR> being the name of your 'bookmark'
It will create an alias to cd (back) to here.
To return to a 'bookmarked' dir type
THEDIR
It will run the stored alias and cd back there.
Caution: Use only if you understand that this might override existing shell aliases
and what that means.
Switch statement for bash script
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[ Log in to get rid of
this advertisement] Hello, i am currently trying out the switch statement using
bash script.
while true
do
showmenu
read choice
echo "Enter a choice:"
case "$choice" in
"1")
echo "Number One"
;;
"2")
echo "Number Two"
;;
"3")
echo "Number Three"
;;
"4")
echo "Number One, Two, Three"
;;
"5")
echo "Program Exited"
exit 0
;;
*)
echo "Please enter number ONLY ranging from 1-5!"
;;
esac
done
OUTPUT:
1. Number1
2. Number2
3. Number3
4. All
5. Quit
Enter a choice:
So, when the code is run, a menu with option 1-5 will be shown, then the user
will be asked to enter a choice and finally an output is shown. But it is possible
if the user want to enter multiple choices. For example, user enter choice "1" and
"3", so the output will be "Number One" and "Number Three". Any idea?
Just something to get you started.
Code:
#! /bin/bash
showmenu ()
{
typeset ii
typeset -i jj=1
typeset -i kk
typeset -i valid=0 # valid=1 if input is good
while (( ! valid ))
do
for ii in "${options[@]}"
do
echo "$jj) $ii"
let jj++
done
read -e -p 'Select a list of actions : ' -a answer
jj=0
valid=1
for kk in "${answer[@]}"
do
if (( kk < 1 || kk > "${#options[@]}" ))
then
echo "Error Item $jj is out of bounds" 1>&2
valid=0
break
fi
let jj++
done
done
}
typeset -r c1=Number1
typeset -r c2=Number2
typeset -r c3=Number3
typeset -r c4=All
typeset -r c5=Quit
typeset -ra options=($c1 $c2 $c3 $c4 $c5)
typeset -a answer
typeset -i kk
while true
do
showmenu
for kk in "${answer[@]}"
do
case $kk in
1)
echo 'Number One'
;;
2)
echo 'Number Two'
;;
3)
echo 'Number Three'
;;
4)
echo 'Number One, Two, Three'
;;
5)
echo 'Program Exit'
exit 0
;;
esac
done
done
Parsing bash script options with getopts Posted on January 4, 2015 | 5 minutes |
Kevin Sookocheff A common task in shell scripting is to parse command line arguments to your
script. Bash provides the getopts built-in function to do just that. This tutorial
explains how to use the getopts built-in function to parse arguments and options
to a bash script.
The getopts function takes three parameters. The first is a specification of
which options are valid, listed as a sequence of letters. For example, the string
'ht' signifies that the options -h and -t are valid.
The second argument to getopts is a variable that will be populated with the
option or argument to be processed next. In the following loop, opt will hold the
value of the current option that has been parsed by getopts .
while getopts ":ht" opt; do
case ${opt} in
h ) # process option a
;;
t ) # process option t
;;
\? ) echo "Usage: cmd [-h] [-t]"
;;
esac
done
This example shows a few additional features of getopts . First, if an invalid
option is provided, the option variable is assigned the value ? . You can catch
this case and provide an appropriate usage message to the user. Second, this behaviour is only
true when you prepend the list of valid options with : to disable the default
error handling of invalid options. It is recommended to always disable the default error
handling in your scripts.
The third argument to getopts is the list of arguments and options to be
processed. When not provided, this defaults to the arguments and options provided to the
application ( $@ ). You can provide this third argument to use
getopts to parse any list of arguments and options you provide.
Shifting
processed options
The variable OPTIND holds the number of options parsed by the last call to
getopts . It is common practice to call the shift command at the end
of your processing loop to remove options that have already been handled from $@
.
shift $((OPTIND -1))
Parsing options with arguments
Options that themselves have arguments are signified with a : . The argument to
an option is placed in the variable OPTARG . In the following example, the option
t takes an argument. When the argument is provided, we copy its value to the
variable target . If no argument is provided getopts will set
opt to : . We can recognize this error condition by catching the
: case and printing an appropriate error message.
while getopts ":t:" opt; do
case ${opt} in
t )
target=$OPTARG
;;
\? )
echo "Invalid option: $OPTARG" 1>&2
;;
: )
echo "Invalid option: $OPTARG requires an argument" 1>&2
;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND -1))
An extended example – parsing nested arguments and options
Let's walk through an extended example of processing a command that takes options, has a
sub-command, and whose sub-command takes an additional option that has an argument. This is a
mouthful so let's break it down using an example. Let's say we are writing our own version of
the pip command . In
this version you can call pip with the -h option to display a help
message.
> pip -h
Usage:
pip -h Display this help message.
pip install Install a Python package.
We can use getopts to parse the -h option with the following
while loop. In it we catch invalid options with \? and
shift all arguments that have been processed with shift $((OPTIND
-1)) .
while getopts ":h" opt; do
case ${opt} in
h )
echo "Usage:"
echo " pip -h Display this help message."
echo " pip install Install a Python package."
exit 0
;;
\? )
echo "Invalid Option: -$OPTARG" 1>&2
exit 1
;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND -1))
Now let's add the sub-command install to our script. install takes
as an argument the Python package to install.
> pip install urllib3
install also takes an option, -t . -t takes as an
argument the location to install the package to relative to the current directory.
> pip install urllib3 -t ./src/lib
To process this line we must find the sub-command to execute. This value is the first
argument to our script.
subcommand=$1
shift # Remove `pip` from the argument list
Now we can process the sub-command install . In our example, the option
-t is actually an option that follows the package argument so we begin by removing
install from the argument list and processing the remainder of the line.
case "$subcommand" in
install)
package=$1
shift # Remove `install` from the argument list
;;
esac
After shifting the argument list we can process the remaining arguments as if they are of
the form package -t src/lib . The -t option takes an argument itself.
This argument will be stored in the variable OPTARG and we save it to the variable
target for further work.
case "$subcommand" in
install)
package=$1
shift # Remove `install` from the argument list
while getopts ":t:" opt; do
case ${opt} in
t )
target=$OPTARG
;;
\? )
echo "Invalid Option: -$OPTARG" 1>&2
exit 1
;;
: )
echo "Invalid Option: -$OPTARG requires an argument" 1>&2
exit 1
;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND -1))
;;
esac
Putting this all together, we end up with the following script that parses arguments to our
version of pip and its sub-command install .
package="" # Default to empty package
target="" # Default to empty target
# Parse options to the `pip` command
while getopts ":h" opt; do
case ${opt} in
h )
echo "Usage:"
echo " pip -h Display this help message."
echo " pip install <package> Install <package>."
exit 0
;;
\? )
echo "Invalid Option: -$OPTARG" 1>&2
exit 1
;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND -1))
subcommand=$1; shift # Remove 'pip' from the argument list
case "$subcommand" in
# Parse options to the install sub command
install)
package=$1; shift # Remove 'install' from the argument list
# Process package options
while getopts ":t:" opt; do
case ${opt} in
t )
target=$OPTARG
;;
\? )
echo "Invalid Option: -$OPTARG" 1>&2
exit 1
;;
: )
echo "Invalid Option: -$OPTARG requires an argument" 1>&2
exit 1
;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND -1))
;;
esac
After processing the above sequence of commands, the variable package will hold
the package to install and the variable target will hold the target to install the
package to. You can use this as a template for processing any set of arguments and options to
your scripts.
Update: It's been more than 5 years since I started this answer. Thank you for LOTS of great
edits/comments/suggestions. In order save maintenance time, I've modified the code block to
be 100% copy-paste ready. Please do not post comments like "What if you changed X to Y ".
Instead, copy-paste the code block, see the output, make the change, rerun the script, and
comment "I changed X to Y and " I don't have time to test your ideas and tell you if they
work.
Method #1: Using bash without getopt[s]
Two common ways to pass key-value-pair arguments are:
cat >/tmp/demo-space-separated.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
POSITIONAL=()
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]
do
key="$1"
case $key in
-e|--extension)
EXTENSION="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
-s|--searchpath)
SEARCHPATH="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
-l|--lib)
LIBPATH="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
--default)
DEFAULT=YES
shift # past argument
;;
*) # unknown option
POSITIONAL+=("$1") # save it in an array for later
shift # past argument
;;
esac
done
set -- "${POSITIONAL[@]}" # restore positional parameters
echo "FILE EXTENSION = ${EXTENSION}"
echo "SEARCH PATH = ${SEARCHPATH}"
echo "LIBRARY PATH = ${LIBPATH}"
echo "DEFAULT = ${DEFAULT}"
echo "Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION:" $(ls -1 "${SEARCHPATH}"/*."${EXTENSION}" | wc -l)
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
echo "Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:"
tail -1 "$1"
fi
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/demo-space-separated.sh
/tmp/demo-space-separated.sh -e conf -s /etc -l /usr/lib /etc/hosts
output from copy-pasting the block above:
FILE EXTENSION = conf
SEARCH PATH = /etc
LIBRARY PATH = /usr/lib
DEFAULT =
Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION: 14
Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:
#93.184.216.34 example.com
cat >/tmp/demo-equals-separated.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
for i in "$@"
do
case $i in
-e=*|--extension=*)
EXTENSION="${i#*=}"
shift # past argument=value
;;
-s=*|--searchpath=*)
SEARCHPATH="${i#*=}"
shift # past argument=value
;;
-l=*|--lib=*)
LIBPATH="${i#*=}"
shift # past argument=value
;;
--default)
DEFAULT=YES
shift # past argument with no value
;;
*)
# unknown option
;;
esac
done
echo "FILE EXTENSION = ${EXTENSION}"
echo "SEARCH PATH = ${SEARCHPATH}"
echo "LIBRARY PATH = ${LIBPATH}"
echo "DEFAULT = ${DEFAULT}"
echo "Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION:" $(ls -1 "${SEARCHPATH}"/*."${EXTENSION}" | wc -l)
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
echo "Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:"
tail -1 $1
fi
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/demo-equals-separated.sh
/tmp/demo-equals-separated.sh -e=conf -s=/etc -l=/usr/lib /etc/hosts
output from copy-pasting the block above:
FILE EXTENSION = conf
SEARCH PATH = /etc
LIBRARY PATH = /usr/lib
DEFAULT =
Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION: 14
Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:
#93.184.216.34 example.com
To better understand ${i#*=} search for "Substring Removal" in this guide . It is
functionally equivalent to `sed 's/[^=]*=//' <<< "$i"` which calls a
needless subprocess or `echo "$i" | sed 's/[^=]*=//'` which calls two
needless subprocesses.
More recent getopt versions don't have these limitations.
Additionally, the POSIX shell (and others) offer getopts which doesn't have
these limitations. I've included a simplistic getopts example.
Usage demo-getopts.sh -vf /etc/hosts foo bar
cat >/tmp/demo-getopts.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh
# A POSIX variable
OPTIND=1 # Reset in case getopts has been used previously in the shell.
# Initialize our own variables:
output_file=""
verbose=0
while getopts "h?vf:" opt; do
case "$opt" in
h|\?)
show_help
exit 0
;;
v) verbose=1
;;
f) output_file=$OPTARG
;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND-1))
[ "${1:-}" = "--" ] && shift
echo "verbose=$verbose, output_file='$output_file', Leftovers: $@"
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/demo-getopts.sh
/tmp/demo-getopts.sh -vf /etc/hosts foo bar
output from copy-pasting the block above:
verbose=1, output_file='/etc/hosts', Leftovers: foo bar
The advantages of getopts are:
It's more portable, and will work in other shells like dash .
It can handle multiple single options like -vf filename in the typical
Unix way, automatically.
The disadvantage of getopts is that it can only handle short options (
-h , not --help ) without additional code.
There is a getopts tutorial which explains
what all of the syntax and variables mean. In bash, there is also help getopts ,
which might be informative.
No answer mentions enhanced getopt . And the top-voted answer is misleading: It either
ignores -vfd style short options (requested by the OP) or options after
positional arguments (also requested by the OP); and it ignores parsing-errors. Instead:
Use enhanced getopt from util-linux or formerly GNU glibc .
1
It works with getopt_long() the C function of GNU glibc.
Has all useful distinguishing features (the others don't have them):
handles spaces, quoting characters and even binary in arguments
2 (non-enhanced getopt can't do this)
it can handle options at the end: script.sh -o outFile file1 file2 -v
( getopts doesn't do this)
allows = -style long options: script.sh --outfile=fileOut
--infile fileIn (allowing both is lengthy if self parsing)
allows combined short options, e.g. -vfd (real work if self
parsing)
allows touching option-arguments, e.g. -oOutfile or
-vfdoOutfile
Is so old already 3 that no GNU system is missing this (e.g. any
Linux has it).
You can test for its existence with: getopt --test → return value
4.
Other getopt or shell-builtin getopts are of limited
use.
verbose: y, force: y, debug: y, in: ./foo/bar/someFile, out: /fizz/someOtherFile
with the following myscript
#!/bin/bash
# saner programming env: these switches turn some bugs into errors
set -o errexit -o pipefail -o noclobber -o nounset
# -allow a command to fail with !'s side effect on errexit
# -use return value from ${PIPESTATUS[0]}, because ! hosed $?
! getopt --test > /dev/null
if [[ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -ne 4 ]]; then
echo 'I'm sorry, `getopt --test` failed in this environment.'
exit 1
fi
OPTIONS=dfo:v
LONGOPTS=debug,force,output:,verbose
# -regarding ! and PIPESTATUS see above
# -temporarily store output to be able to check for errors
# -activate quoting/enhanced mode (e.g. by writing out "--options")
# -pass arguments only via -- "$@" to separate them correctly
! PARSED=$(getopt --options=$OPTIONS --longoptions=$LONGOPTS --name "$0" -- "$@")
if [[ ${PIPESTATUS[0]} -ne 0 ]]; then
# e.g. return value is 1
# then getopt has complained about wrong arguments to stdout
exit 2
fi
# read getopt's output this way to handle the quoting right:
eval set -- "$PARSED"
d=n f=n v=n outFile=-
# now enjoy the options in order and nicely split until we see --
while true; do
case "$1" in
-d|--debug)
d=y
shift
;;
-f|--force)
f=y
shift
;;
-v|--verbose)
v=y
shift
;;
-o|--output)
outFile="$2"
shift 2
;;
--)
shift
break
;;
*)
echo "Programming error"
exit 3
;;
esac
done
# handle non-option arguments
if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]; then
echo "$0: A single input file is required."
exit 4
fi
echo "verbose: $v, force: $f, debug: $d, in: $1, out: $outFile"
1 enhanced getopt is available on most "bash-systems", including
Cygwin; on OS X try brew install gnu-getopt or sudo port
install getopt 2 the POSIX exec() conventions have no reliable way to
pass binary NULL in command line arguments; those bytes prematurely end the argument 3 first version released in 1997 or before (I only tracked it back to
1997)
#!/bin/bash
for i in "$@"
do
case $i in
-p=*|--prefix=*)
PREFIX="${i#*=}"
;;
-s=*|--searchpath=*)
SEARCHPATH="${i#*=}"
;;
-l=*|--lib=*)
DIR="${i#*=}"
;;
--default)
DEFAULT=YES
;;
*)
# unknown option
;;
esac
done
echo PREFIX = ${PREFIX}
echo SEARCH PATH = ${SEARCHPATH}
echo DIRS = ${DIR}
echo DEFAULT = ${DEFAULT}
To better understand ${i#*=} search for "Substring Removal" in this guide . It is
functionally equivalent to `sed 's/[^=]*=//' <<< "$i"` which calls a
needless subprocess or `echo "$i" | sed 's/[^=]*=//'` which calls two
needless subprocesses.
I'm about 4 years late to this question, but want to give back. I used the earlier answers as
a starting point to tidy up my old adhoc param parsing. I then refactored out the following
template code. It handles both long and short params, using = or space separated arguments,
as well as multiple short params grouped together. Finally it re-inserts any non-param
arguments back into the $1,$2.. variables. I hope it's useful.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# NOTICE: Uncomment if your script depends on bashisms.
#if [ -z "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then bash $0 $@ ; exit $? ; fi
echo "Before"
for i ; do echo - $i ; done
# Code template for parsing command line parameters using only portable shell
# code, while handling both long and short params, handling '-f file' and
# '-f=file' style param data and also capturing non-parameters to be inserted
# back into the shell positional parameters.
while [ -n "$1" ]; do
# Copy so we can modify it (can't modify $1)
OPT="$1"
# Detect argument termination
if [ x"$OPT" = x"--" ]; then
shift
for OPT ; do
REMAINS="$REMAINS \"$OPT\""
done
break
fi
# Parse current opt
while [ x"$OPT" != x"-" ] ; do
case "$OPT" in
# Handle --flag=value opts like this
-c=* | --config=* )
CONFIGFILE="${OPT#*=}"
shift
;;
# and --flag value opts like this
-c* | --config )
CONFIGFILE="$2"
shift
;;
-f* | --force )
FORCE=true
;;
-r* | --retry )
RETRY=true
;;
# Anything unknown is recorded for later
* )
REMAINS="$REMAINS \"$OPT\""
break
;;
esac
# Check for multiple short options
# NOTICE: be sure to update this pattern to match valid options
NEXTOPT="${OPT#-[cfr]}" # try removing single short opt
if [ x"$OPT" != x"$NEXTOPT" ] ; then
OPT="-$NEXTOPT" # multiple short opts, keep going
else
break # long form, exit inner loop
fi
done
# Done with that param. move to next
shift
done
# Set the non-parameters back into the positional parameters ($1 $2 ..)
eval set -- $REMAINS
echo -e "After: \n configfile='$CONFIGFILE' \n force='$FORCE' \n retry='$RETRY' \n remains='$REMAINS'"
for i ; do echo - $i ; done
> ,
I have found the matter to write portable parsing in scripts so frustrating that I have
written Argbash - a FOSS
code generator that can generate the arguments-parsing code for your script plus it has some
nice features:
An array variable whose members are the line numbers in source files corresponding to each member of FUNCNAME .
${BASH_LINENO[$i]} is the line number in the source file where ${FUNCNAME[$i]} was called. The corresponding
source file name is ${BASH_SOURCE[$i]} . Use LINENO to obtain the current line number.
I have a test script which has a lot of commands and will generate lots of output, I use
set -x or set -v and set -e , so the script would stop
when error occurs. However, it's still rather difficult for me to locate which line did the
execution stop in order to locate the problem. Is there a method which can output the line
number of the script before each line is executed? Or output the line number before the
command exhibition generated by set -x ? Or any method which can deal with my
script line location problem would be a great help. Thanks.
You mention that you're already using -x . The variable PS4 denotes
the value is the prompt printed before the command line is echoed when the -x
option is set and defaults to : followed by space.
You can change PS4 to emit the LINENO (The line number in the
script or shell function currently executing).
For example, if your script reads:
$ cat script
foo=10
echo ${foo}
echo $((2 + 2))
Executing it thus would print line numbers:
$ PS4='Line ${LINENO}: ' bash -x script
Line 1: foo=10
Line 2: echo 10
10
Line 3: echo 4
4
Simple (but powerful) solution: Place echo around the code you think that causes
the problem and move the echo line by line until the messages does not appear
anymore on screen - because the script has stop because of an error before.
Even more powerful solution: Install bashdb the bash debugger and debug the
script line by line
In a fairly sophisticated script I wouldn't like to see all line numbers; rather I would
like to be in control of the output.
Define a function
echo_line_no () {
grep -n "$1" $0 | sed "s/echo_line_no//"
# grep the line(s) containing input $1 with line numbers
# replace the function name with nothing
} # echo_line_no
Use it with quotes like
echo_line_no "this is a simple comment with a line number"
Output is
16 "this is a simple comment with a line number"
if the number of this line in the source file is 16.
Sure. Why do you need this? How do you work with this? What can you do with this? Is this
simple approach really sufficient or useful? Why do you want to tinker with this at all?
~/.config/gogo/gogo.conf
file (which should be auto created if it doesn't exist) and has the following syntax.
# Comments are lines that start from '#' character.
default = ~/something
alias = /desired/path
alias2 = /desired/path with space
alias3 = "/this/also/works"
zażółć = "unicode/is/also/supported/zażółć gęślą jaźń"
If you run gogo run without any arguments, it will go to the directory specified in default;
this alias is always available, even if it's not in the configuration file, and points to $HOME
directory.
To display the current aliases, use the -l switch. From the following
screenshot, you can see that default points to ~/home/tecmint which is user
tecmint's home directory on the system.
You can also create aliases for connecting directly into directories on a remote Linux
servers. To do this, simple add the following lines to gogo configuration file, which can be
accessed using -e flag, this will use the editor specified in the $EDITOR env variable.
$ gogo -e
One configuration file opens, add these following lines to it.
The bulk of what this tool does can be replaced with a shell function that does `
cd $(grep -w ^$1 ~/.config/gogo.conf | cut -f2 -d' ') `, where
`$1` is the argument supplied to the function.
If you've already installed fzf (and you really should), then you can get a far better
experience than even zsh's excellent "completion" facilities. I use something like `
cd $(fzf -1 +m -q "$1" < ~/.cache/to) ` (My equivalent of gogo.conf is `
~/.cache/to `).
Tutorial on using exit codes from Linux or UNIX commands. Examples of how to get the exit code of a command,
how to set the exit code and how to suppress exit codes.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Table of contents
What is an exit code in the UNIX or Linux shell?
An exit code, or sometimes known as a return code, is the code returned to a parent process by an executable. On
POSIX
systems the standard exit code is
0
for success and any number from
1
to
255
for
anything else.
Exit codes can be interpreted by machine scripts to adapt in the event of successes of failures. If exit codes are not set the
exit code will be the exit code of the last run command.
How to get the exit code of a command
To get the exit code of a command type
echo $?
at the command prompt. In the following example a file is printed
to the terminal using the
cat
command.
cat file.txt
hello world
echo $?
0
The command was successful. The file exists and there are no errors in reading the file or writing it to the terminal. The
exit code is therefore
0
.
In the following example the file does not exist.
cat doesnotexist.txt
cat: doesnotexist.txt: No such file or directory
echo $?
1
The exit code is
1
as the operation was not successful.
How to use exit codes in scripts
To use exit codes in scripts an
if
statement can be used to see if an operation was successful.
#!/bin/bash
cat file.txt
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "The script ran ok"
exit 0
else
echo "The script failed" >&2
exit 1
fi
If the command was unsuccessful the exit code will be
0
and 'The script ran ok' will be printed to the terminal.
How to set an exit code
To set an exit code in a script use
exit 0
where
0
is the number you want to return. In the
following example a shell script exits with a
1
. This file is saved as
exit.sh
.
#!/bin/bash
exit 1
Executing this script shows that the exit code is correctly set.
bash exit.sh
echo $?
1
What exit code should I use?
The Linux Documentation Project has a list of
reserved codes
that also offers advice on what code to use for specific scenarios. These are the standard error codes in
Linux or UNIX.
1
- Catchall for general errors
2
- Misuse of shell builtins (according to Bash documentation)
126
- Command invoked cannot execute
127
- "command not found"
128
- Invalid argument to exit
128+n
- Fatal error signal "n"
130
- Script terminated by Control-C
255\*
- Exit status out of range
How to suppress exit statuses
Sometimes there may be a requirement to suppress an exit status. It may be that a command is being run within another script
and that anything other than a
0
status is undesirable.
In the following example a file is printed to the terminal using
cat
.
This file does not exist so will cause an exit status of
1
.
To suppress the error message any output to standard error is sent to
/dev/null
using
2>/dev/null
.
If the cat command fails an
OR
operation can be used to provide a fallback -
cat file.txt || exit 0
.
In this case an exit code of
0
is returned even if there is an error.
Combining both the suppression of error output and the
OR
operation the following script returns a status code of
0
with no output even though the file does not exist.
Exit codes are a number between 0 and 255, which is returned by any Unix command when it
returns control to its parent process.
Other numbers can be used, but these are treated modulo 256, so exit -10 is
equivalent to exit 246 , and exit 257 is equivalent to exit
1 .
These can be used within a shell script to change the flow of execution depending on the
success or failure of commands executed. This was briefly introduced in Variables - Part II . Here we shall look
in more detail in the available interpretations of exit codes.
Success is traditionally represented with exit 0 ; failure is
normally indicated with a non-zero exit-code. This value can indicate different reasons for
failure.
For example, GNU grep returns 0 on success, 1 if no
matches were found, and 2 for other errors (syntax errors, non-existent input
files, etc).
We shall look at three different methods for checking error status, and discuss the pros and
cons of each approach.
Firstly, the simple approach:
#!/bin/sh
# First attempt at checking return codes
USERNAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f1`
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
echo "Sorry, cannot find user ${1} in /etc/passwd"
exit 1
fi
NAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f5`
HOMEDIR=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f6`
echo "USERNAME: $USERNAME"
echo "NAME: $NAME"
echo "HOMEDIR: $HOMEDIR"
This script works fine if you supply a valid username in /etc/passwd . However, if
you enter an invalid code, it does not do what you might at first expect - it keeps running,
and just shows:
USERNAME:
NAME:
HOMEDIR:
Why is this? As mentioned, the $? variable is set to the return code of the
last executed command . In this case, that is cut . cut had no
problems which it feels like reporting - as far as I can tell from testing it, and reading the
documentation, cut returns zero whatever happens! It was fed an empty string, and
did its job - returned the first field of its input, which just happened to be the empty
string.
So what do we do? If we have an error here, grep will report it, not
cut . Therefore, we have to test grep 's return code, not
cut 's.
#!/bin/sh
# Second attempt at checking return codes
grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ "$?" -ne "0" ]; then
echo "Sorry, cannot find user ${1} in /etc/passwd"
exit 1
fi
USERNAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f1`
NAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f5`
HOMEDIR=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f6`
echo "USERNAME: $USERNAME"
echo "NAME: $NAME"
echo "HOMEDIR: $HOMEDIR"
This fixes the problem for us, though at the expense of slightly longer code.
That is the basic way which textbooks might show you, but it is far from being all there is to
know about error-checking in shell scripts. This method may not be the most suitable to your
particular command-sequence, or may be unmaintainable. Below, we shall investigate two
alternative approaches.
As a second approach, we can tidy this somewhat by putting the test into a separate
function, instead of littering the code with lots of 4-line tests:
#!/bin/sh
# A Tidier approach
check_errs()
{
# Function. Parameter 1 is the return code
# Para. 2 is text to display on failure.
if [ "${1}" -ne "0" ]; then
echo "ERROR # ${1} : ${2}"
# as a bonus, make our script exit with the right error code.
exit ${1}
fi
}
### main script starts here ###
grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd > /dev/null 2>&1
check_errs $? "User ${1} not found in /etc/passwd"
USERNAME=`grep "^${1}:" /etc/passwd|cut -d":" -f1`
check_errs $? "Cut returned an error"
echo "USERNAME: $USERNAME"
check_errs $? "echo returned an error - very strange!"
This allows us to test for errors 3 times, with customised error messages, without having to
write 3 individual tests. By writing the test routine once. we can call it as many times as we
wish, creating a more intelligent script, at very little expense to the programmer. Perl
programmers will recognise this as being similar to the die command in Perl.
As a third approach, we shall look at a simpler and cruder method. I tend to use this for
building Linux kernels - simple automations which, if they go well, should just get on with it,
but when things go wrong, tend to require the operator to do something intelligent (ie, that
which a script cannot do!):
#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/src/linux && \
make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install && \
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/my-new-kernel && cp System.map /boot && \
echo "Your new kernel awaits, m'lord."
This script runs through the various tasks involved in building a Linux kernel (which can
take quite a while), and uses the && operator to check for success. To do this
with if would involve:
#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/src/linux
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
make dep
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
make bzImage
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
make modules
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
make modules_install
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/my-new-kernel
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
cp System.map /boot/
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
echo "Your new kernel awaits, m'lord."
fi
fi
fi
fi
fi
fi
fi
fi
... which I, personally, find pretty difficult to follow.
The && and || operators are the shell's equivalent of AND and
OR tests. These can be thrown together as above, or:
Only one command can be in each part. This method is handy for simple success / fail
scenarios, but if you want to check on the status of the echo commands themselves,
it is easy to quickly become confused about which && and ||
applies to which command. It is also very difficult to maintain. Therefore this construct is
only recommended for simple sequencing of commands.
In earlier versions, I had suggested that you can use a subshell to execute multiple
commands depending on whether the cp command succeeded or failed:
cp /foo /bar && ( echo Success ; echo Success part II; ) || ( echo Failed ; echo Failed part II )
But in fact, Marcel found that this does not work properly. The syntax for a subshell
is:
( command1 ; command2; command3 )
The return code of the subshell is the return code of the final command (
command3 in this example). That return code will affect the overall command. So
the output of this script:
cp /foo /bar && ( echo Success ; echo Success part II; /bin/false ) || ( echo Failed ; echo Failed part II )
Is that it runs the Success part (because cp succeeded, and then - because
/bin/false returns failure, it also executes the Failure part:
Success
Success part II
Failed
Failed part II
So if you need to execute multiple commands as a result of the status of some other
condition, it is better (and much clearer) to use the standard if ,
then , else syntax.
As I understand pipes and commands, bash takes each command, spawns a process for each one
and connects stdout of the previous one with the stdin of the next one.
For example, in "ls -lsa | grep feb", bash will create two processes, and connect the
output of "ls -lsa" to the input of "grep feb".
When you execute a background command like "sleep 30 &" in bash, you get the pid of
the background process running your command. Surprisingly for me, when I wrote "ls -lsa |
grep feb &" bash returned only one PID.
How should this be interpreted? A process runs both "ls -lsa" and "grep feb"? Several
process are created but I only get the pid of one of them?
When you run a job in the background, bash prints the process ID of its subprocess, the one
that runs the command in that job. If that job happens to create more subprocesses, that's
none of the parent shell's business.
When the background job is a pipeline (i.e. the command is of the form something1 |
something2 & , and not e.g. { something1 | something2; } & ),
there's an optimization which is strongly suggested by POSIX and performed by most shells
including bash: each of the elements of the pipeline are executed directly as subprocesses of
the original shell. What POSIX mandates is that the variable
$! is set to the last command in the pipeline in this case. In most shells,
that last command is a subprocess of the original process, and so are the other commands in
the pipeline.
When you run ls -lsa | grep feb , there are three processes involved: the one
that runs the left-hand side of the pipe (a subshell that finishes setting up the pipe then
executes ls ), the one that runs the right-hand side of the pipe (a subshell
that finishes setting up the pipe then executes grep ), and the original process
that waits for the pipe to finish.
You can watch what happens by tracing the processes:
use grep [n]ame to remove that grep -v name this is first... Sec using xargs in the way how
it is up there is wrong to rnu whatever it is piped you have to use -i ( interactive mode)
otherwise you may have issues with the command.
I start a background process from my shell script, and I would like to kill this process when my script finishes.
How to get the PID of this process from my shell script? As far as I can see variable $! contains the PID of the
current script, not the background process.
You need to save the PID of the background process at the time you start it:
foo &
FOO_PID=$!
# do other stuff
kill $FOO_PID
You cannot use job control, since that is an interactive feature and tied to a controlling terminal. A script will not necessarily
have a terminal attached at all so job control will not necessarily be available.
An even simpler way to kill all child process of a bash script:
pkill -P $$
The -P flag works the same way with pkill and pgrep - it gets child processes, only
with pkill the child processes get killed and with pgrep child PIDs are printed to stdout.
this is what I have done. Check it out, hope it can help.
#!/bin/bash
#
# So something to show.
echo "UNO" > UNO.txt
echo "DOS" > DOS.txt
#
# Initialize Pid List
dPidLst=""
#
# Generate background processes
tail -f UNO.txt&
dPidLst="$dPidLst $!"
tail -f DOS.txt&
dPidLst="$dPidLst $!"
#
# Report process IDs
echo PID=$$
echo dPidLst=$dPidLst
#
# Show process on current shell
ps -f
#
# Start killing background processes from list
for dPid in $dPidLst
do
echo killing $dPid. Process is still there.
ps | grep $dPid
kill $dPid
ps | grep $dPid
echo Just ran "'"ps"'" command, $dPid must not show again.
done
Then just run it as: ./bgkill.sh with proper permissions of course
root@umsstd22 [P]:~# ./bgkill.sh
PID=23757
dPidLst= 23758 23759
UNO
DOS
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 3937 3935 0 11:07 pts/5 00:00:00 -bash
root 23757 3937 0 11:55 pts/5 00:00:00 /bin/bash ./bgkill.sh
root 23758 23757 0 11:55 pts/5 00:00:00 tail -f UNO.txt
root 23759 23757 0 11:55 pts/5 00:00:00 tail -f DOS.txt
root 23760 23757 0 11:55 pts/5 00:00:00 ps -f
killing 23758. Process is still there.
23758 pts/5 00:00:00 tail
./bgkill.sh: line 24: 23758 Terminated tail -f UNO.txt
Just ran 'ps' command, 23758 must not show again.
killing 23759. Process is still there.
23759 pts/5 00:00:00 tail
./bgkill.sh: line 24: 23759 Terminated tail -f DOS.txt
Just ran 'ps' command, 23759 must not show again.
root@umsstd22 [P]:~# ps -f
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 3937 3935 0 11:07 pts/5 00:00:00 -bash
root 24200 3937 0 11:56 pts/5 00:00:00 ps -f
This typically gives a text representation of all the processes for the "user" and the -p option gives the process-id. It does
not depend, as far as I understand, on having the processes be owned by the current shell. It also shows forks.
pgrep can get you all of the child PIDs of a parent process. As mentioned earlier $$ is the current
scripts PID. So, if you want a script that cleans up after itself, this should do the trick:
[ -n file.txt ] doesn't check its size , it checks that the string file.txt is
non-zero length, so it will always succeed.
If you want to say " size is non-zero", you need [ -s file.txt ] .
To get a file's size , you can use wc -c to get the size ( file length) in bytes:
file=file.txt
minimumsize=90000
actualsize=$(wc -c <"$file")
if [ $actualsize -ge $minimumsize ]; then
echo size is over $minimumsize bytes
else
echo size is under $minimumsize bytes
fi
In this case, it sounds like that's what you want.
But FYI, if you want to know how much disk space the file is using, you could use du -k to get the
size (disk space used) in kilobytes:
file=file.txt
minimumsize=90
actualsize=$(du -k "$file" | cut -f 1)
if [ $actualsize -ge $minimumsize ]; then
echo size is over $minimumsize kilobytes
else
echo size is under $minimumsize kilobytes
fi
If you need more control over the output format, you can also look at stat . On Linux, you'd start with something
like stat -c '%s' file.txt , and on BSD/Mac OS X, something like stat -f '%z' file.txt .
--Mikel
5 Why du -b "$file" | cut -f 1 instead of stat -c '%s' "$file" ? Or stat --printf="%s" "$file"
? – mivk Dec
14 '13 at 11:00
It surprises me that no one mentioned stat to check file size. Some methods are definitely better: using -s
to find out whether the file is empty or not is easier than anything else if that's all you want. And if you want to
find files of a size, then find is certainly the way to go.
I also like du a lot to get file size in kb, but, for bytes, I'd use stat :
size=$(stat -f%z $filename) # BSD stat
size=$(stat -c%s $filename) # GNU stat?
alternative solution with awk and double parenthesis:
FILENAME=file.txt
SIZE=$(du -sb $FILENAME | awk '{ print $1 }')
if ((SIZE<90000)) ; then
echo "less";
else
echo "not less";
fi
The choice of shell as a programming language is strange, but the idea is good...
Notable quotes:
"... The tool is developed by Igor Chubin, also known for its console-oriented weather forecast service wttr.in , which can be used to retrieve the weather from the console using only cURL or Wget. ..."
While it does have its own cheat sheet repository too, the project is actually concentrated around the creation of a unified mechanism
to access well developed and maintained cheat sheet repositories.
The tool is developed by Igor Chubin, also known for its
console-oriented weather forecast
service wttr.in , which can be used to retrieve the weather from the console using
only cURL or Wget.
It's worth noting that cheat.sh is not new. In fact it had its initial commit around May, 2017, and is a very popular repository
on GitHub. But I personally only came across it recently, and I found it very useful, so I figured there must be some Linux Uprising
readers who are not aware of this cool gem.
cheat.sh features & more
cheat.sh major features:
Supports 58 programming
languages , several DBMSes, and more than 1000 most important UNIX/Linux commands
Very fast, returns answers within 100ms
Simple curl / browser interface
An optional command line client (cht.sh) is available, which allows you to quickly search cheat sheets and easily copy
snippets without leaving the terminal
Can be used from code editors, allowing inserting code snippets without having to open a web browser, search for the code,
copy it, then return to your code editor and paste it. It supports Vim, Emacs, Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text and IntelliJ Idea
Comes with a special stealth mode in which any text you select (adding it into the selection buffer of X Window System
or into the clipboard) is used as a search query by cht.sh, so you can get answers without touching any other keys
The command line client features a special shell mode with a persistent queries context and readline support. It also has a query
history, it integrates with the clipboard, supports tab completion for shells like Bash, Fish and Zsh, and it includes the stealth
mode I mentioned in the cheat.sh features.
The web, curl and cht.sh (command line) interfaces all make use of https://cheat.sh/
but if you prefer, you can self-host it .
It should be noted that each editor plugin supports a different feature set (configurable server, multiple answers, toggle comments,
and so on). You can view a feature comparison of each cheat.sh editor plugin on the
Editors integration section of the project's
GitHub page.
Want to contribute a cheat sheet? See the cheat.sh guide on
editing or adding a new cheat sheet.
cheat.sh curl / command line client usage examples Examples of using cheat.sh using the curl interface (this requires having curl installed as you'd expect) from the command
line:
Show the tar command cheat sheet:
curl cheat.sh/tar
Example with output:
$ curl cheat.sh/tar
# To extract an uncompressed archive:
tar -xvf /path/to/foo.tar
# To create an uncompressed archive:
tar -cvf /path/to/foo.tar /path/to/foo/
# To extract a .gz archive:
tar -xzvf /path/to/foo.tgz
# To create a .gz archive:
tar -czvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/
# To list the content of an .gz archive:
tar -ztvf /path/to/foo.tgz
# To extract a .bz2 archive:
tar -xjvf /path/to/foo.tgz
# To create a .bz2 archive:
tar -cjvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/
# To extract a .tar in specified Directory:
tar -xvf /path/to/foo.tar -C /path/to/destination/
# To list the content of an .bz2 archive:
tar -jtvf /path/to/foo.tgz
# To create a .gz archive and exclude all jpg,gif,... from the tgz
tar czvf /path/to/foo.tgz --exclude=\*.{jpg,gif,png,wmv,flv,tar.gz,zip} /path/to/foo/
# To use parallel (multi-threaded) implementation of compression algorithms:
tar -z ... -> tar -Ipigz ...
tar -j ... -> tar -Ipbzip2 ...
tar -J ... -> tar -Ipixz ...
cht.sh also works instead of cheat.sh:
curl cht.sh/tar
Want to search for a keyword in all cheat sheets? Use:
curl cheat.sh/~keyword
List the Python programming language cheat sheet for random list :
curl cht.sh/python/random+list
Example with output:
$ curl cht.sh/python/random+list
# python - How to randomly select an item from a list?
#
# Use random.choice
# (https://docs.python.org/2/library/random.htmlrandom.choice):
import random
foo = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
print(random.choice(foo))
# For cryptographically secure random choices (e.g. for generating a
# passphrase from a wordlist), use random.SystemRandom
# (https://docs.python.org/2/library/random.htmlrandom.SystemRandom)
# class:
import random
foo = ['battery', 'correct', 'horse', 'staple']
secure_random = random.SystemRandom()
print(secure_random.choice(foo))
# [Pēteris Caune] [so/q/306400] [cc by-sa 3.0]
Replace python with some other programming language supported by cheat.sh, and random+list with the cheat
sheet you want to show.
Want to eliminate the comments from your answer? Add ?Q at the end of the query (below is an example using the same
/python/random+list):
For more flexibility and tab completion you can use cht.sh, the command line cheat.sh client; you'll find instructions for how to
install it further down this article. Examples of using the cht.sh command line client:
Show the tar command cheat sheet:
cht.sh tar
List the Python programming language cheat sheet for random list :
cht.sh python random list
There is no need to use quotes with multiple keywords.
You can start the cht.sh client in a special shell mode using:
cht.sh --shell
And then you can start typing your queries. Example:
$ cht.sh --shell
cht.sh> bash loop
If all your queries are about the same programming language, you can start the client in the special shell mode, directly in that
context. As an example, start it with the Bash context using:
cht.sh --shell bash
Example with output:
$ cht.sh --shell bash
cht.sh/bash> loop
...........
cht.sh/bash> switch case
Want to copy the previously listed answer to the clipboard? Type c , then press Enter to copy the whole
answer, or type C and press Enter to copy it without comments.
Type help in the cht.sh interactive shell mode to see all available commands. Also look under the
Usage section from the cheat.sh GitHub project page for more
options and advanced usage.
How to install cht.sh command line client
You can use cheat.sh in a web browser, from the command line with the help of curl and without having to install anything else, as
explained above, as a code editor plugin, or using its command line client which has some extra features, which I already mentioned.
The steps below are for installing this cht.sh command line client.
If you'd rather install a code editor plugin for cheat.sh, see the
Editors integration page.
1. Install dependencies.
To install the cht.sh command line client, the curl command line tool will be used, so this needs to be installed
on your system. Another dependency is rlwrap , which is required by the cht.sh special shell mode. Install these dependencies
as follows.
Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, and any other Linux distribution based on Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo apt install curl rlwrap
Fedora:
sudo dnf install curl rlwrap
Arch Linux, Manjaro:
sudo pacman -S curl rlwrap
openSUSE:
sudo zypper install curl rlwrap
The packages seem to be named the same on most (if not all) Linux distributions, so if your Linux distribution is not on this list,
just install the curl and rlwrap packages using your distro's package manager.
2. Download and install the cht.sh command line interface.
You can install this either for your user only (so only you can run it), or for all users:
Install it for your user only. The command below assumes you have a ~/.bin folder added to your PATH
(and the folder exists). If you have some other local folder in your PATH where you want to install cht.sh, change
install path in the commands:
Install it for all users (globally, in /usr/local/bin ):
curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/cht.sh
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cht.sh
If the first command appears to have frozen displaying only the cURL output, press the Enter key and you'll be prompted
to enter your password in order to save the file to /usr/local/bin .
You may also download and install the cheat.sh command completion for Bash or Zsh:
In technical terms, "/dev/null" is a virtual device file. As far as programs are concerned, these are treated just like real files.
Utilities can request data from this kind of source, and the operating system feeds them data. But, instead of reading from disk,
the operating system generates this data dynamically. An example of such a file is "/dev/zero."
In this case, however, you will write to a device file. Whatever you write to "/dev/null" is discarded, forgotten, thrown into
the void. To understand why this is useful, you must first have a basic understanding of standard output and standard error in Linux
or *nix type operating systems.
A command-line utility can generate two types of output. Standard output is sent to stdout. Errors are sent to stderr.
By default, stdout and stderr are associated with your terminal window (or console). This means that anything sent to stdout and
stderr is normally displayed on your screen. But through shell redirections, you can change this behavior. For example, you can redirect
stdout to a file. This way, instead of displaying output on the screen, it will be saved to a file for you to read later – or you
can redirect stdout to a physical device, say, a digital LED or LCD display.
Since there are two types of output, standard output and standard error, the first use case is to filter out one type or the other.
It's easier to understand through a practical example. Let's say you're looking for a string in "/sys" to find files that refer to
power settings.
grep -r power /sys/
There will be a lot of files that a regular, non-root user cannot read. This will result in many "Permission denied" errors.
These clutter the output and make it harder to spot the results that you're looking for. Since "Permission denied"
errors are part of stderr, you can redirect them to "/dev/null."
grep -r power /sys/ 2>/dev/null
As you can see, this is much easier to read.
In other cases, it might be useful to do the reverse: filter out standard output so you can only see errors.
ping google.com 1>/dev/null
The screenshot above shows that, without redirecting, ping displays its normal output when it can reach the destination
machine. In the second command, nothing is displayed while the network is online, but as soon as it gets disconnected, only error
messages are displayed.
You can redirect both stdout and stderr to two different locations.
ping google.com 1>/dev/null 2>error.log
In this case, stdout messages won't be displayed at all, and error messages will be saved to the "error.log" file.
Redirect All Output to /dev/null
Sometimes it's useful to get rid of all output. There are two ways to do this.
grep -r power /sys/ >/dev/null 2>&1
The string >/dev/null means "send stdout to /dev/null," and the second part, 2>&1 , means send stderr
to stdout. In this case you have to refer to stdout as "&1" instead of simply "1." Writing "2>1" would just redirect stdout to a
file named "1."
What's important to note here is that the order is important. If you reverse the redirect parameters like this:
grep -r power /sys/ 2>&1 >/dev/null
it won't work as intended. That's because as soon as 2>&1 is interpreted, stderr is sent to stdout and displayed
on screen. Next, stdout is supressed when sent to "/dev/null." The final result is that you will see errors on the screen instead
of suppressing all output. If you can't remember the correct order, there's a simpler redirect that is much easier to type:
grep -r power /sys/ &>/dev/null
In this case, &>/dev/null is equivalent to saying "redirect both stdout and stderr to this location."
Other Examples Where It Can Be Useful to Redirect to /dev/null
Say you want to see how fast your disk can read sequential data. The test is not extremely accurate but accurate enough. You can
use dd for this, but dd either outputs to stdout or can be instructed to write to a file. With of=/dev/null
you can tell dd to write to this virtual file. You don't even have to use shell redirections here. if= specifies
the location of the input file to be read; of= specifies the name of the output file, where to write.
In some scenarios, you may want to see how fast you can download from a server. But you don't want to write to your disk unnecessarily.
Simply enough, don't write to a regular file, write to "/dev/null."
Before proceeding further, let me give you one tip. In the example above the shell tried to
expand a non-existing variable, producing a blank result. This can be very dangerous,
especially when working with path names, therefore, when writing scripts, it's always
recommended to use the nounset option which causes the shell to exit with error
whenever a non existing variable is referenced:
$ set -o nounset
$ echo "You are reading this article on $site_!"
bash: site_: unbound variable
Working with indirection
The use of the ${!parameter} syntax, adds a level of indirection to our
parameter expansion. What does it mean? The parameter which the shell will try to expand is not
parameter ; instead it will try to use the the value of parameter as
the name of the variable to be expanded. Let's explain this with an example. We all know the
HOME variable expands in the path of the user home directory in the system,
right?
$ echo "${HOME}"
/home/egdoc
Very well, if now we assign the string "HOME", to another variable, and use this type of
expansion, we obtain:
As you can see in the example above, instead of obtaining "HOME" as a result, as it would
have happened if we performed a simple expansion, the shell used the value of
variable_to_inspect as the name of the variable to expand, that's why we talk
about a level of indirection.
Case modification expansion
This parameter expansion syntax let us change the case of the alphabetic characters inside
the string resulting from the expansion of the parameter. Say we have a variable called
name ; to capitalize the text returned by the expansion of the variable we would
use the ${parameter^} syntax:
$ name="egidio"
$ echo "${name^}"
Egidio
What if we want to uppercase the entire string, instead of capitalize it? Easy! we use the
${parameter^^} syntax:
$ echo "${name^^}"
EGIDIO
Similarly, to lowercase the first character of a string, we use the
${parameter,} expansion syntax:
$ name="EGIDIO"
$ echo "${name,}"
eGIDIO
To lowercase the entire string, instead, we use the ${parameter,,} syntax:
$ name="EGIDIO"
$ echo "${name,,}"
egidio
In all cases a pattern to match a single character can also be provided. When
the pattern is provided the operation is applied only to the parts of the original string that
matches it:
In the example above we enclose the characters in square brackets: this causes anyone of
them to be matched as a pattern.
When using the expansions we explained in this paragraph and the parameter is
an array subscripted by @ or * , the operation is applied to all the
elements contained in it:
$ my_array=(one two three)
$ echo "${my_array[@]^^}"
ONE TWO THREE
When the index of a specific element in the array is referenced, instead, the operation is
applied only to it:
$ my_array=(one two three)
$ echo "${my_array[2]^^}"
THREE
Substring removal
The next syntax we will examine allows us to remove a pattern from the
beginning or from the end of string resulting from the expansion of a parameter.
Remove
matching pattern from the beginning of the string
The next syntax we will examine, ${parameter#pattern} , allows us to remove a
pattern from the beginning of the string resulting from the parameter
expansion:
$ name="Egidio"
$ echo "${name#Egi}"
dio
A similar result can be obtained by using the "${parameter##pattern}" syntax,
but with one important difference: contrary to the one we used in the example above, which
removes the shortest matching pattern from the beginning of the string, it removes the longest
one. The difference is clearly visible when using the * character in the
pattern :
$ name="Egidio Docile"
$ echo "${name#*i}"
dio Docile
In the example above we used * as part of the pattern that should be removed
from the string resulting by the expansion of the name variable. This
wildcard matches any character, so the pattern itself translates in "'i' character
and everything before it". As we already said, when we use the
${parameter#pattern} syntax, the shortest matching pattern is removed, in this
case it is "Egi". Let's see what happens when we use the "${parameter##pattern}"
syntax instead:
$ name="Egidio Docile"
$ echo "${name##*i}"
le
This time the longest matching pattern is removed ("Egidio Doci"): the longest possible
match includes the third 'i' and everything before it. The result of the expansion is just
"le".
Remove matching pattern from the end of the string
The syntax we saw above remove the shortest or longest matching pattern from the beginning
of the string. If we want the pattern to be removed from the end of the string, instead, we
must use the ${parameter%pattern} or ${parameter%%pattern}
expansions, to remove, respectively, the shortest and longest match from the end of the
string:
In this example the pattern we provided roughly translates in "'i' character and everything
after it starting from the end of the string". The shortest match is "ile", so what is returned
is "Egidio Doc". If we try the same example but we use the syntax which removes the longest
match we obtain:
$ name="Egidio Docile"
$ echo "${name%%i*}"
Eg
In this case the once the longest match is removed, what is returned is "Eg".
In all the expansions we saw above, if parameter is an array and it is
subscripted with * or @ , the removal of the matching pattern is
applied to all its elements:
$ my_array=(one two three)
$ echo "${my_array[@]#*o}"
ne three
We used the previous syntax to remove a matching pattern from the beginning or from the end
of the string resulting from the expansion of a parameter. What if we want to replace
pattern with something else? We can use the
${parameter/pattern/string} or ${parameter//pattern/string} syntax.
The former replaces only the first occurrence of the pattern, the latter all the
occurrences:
$ phrase="yellow is the sun and yellow is the
lemon"
$ echo "${phrase/yellow/red}"
red is the sun and yellow is the lemon
The parameter (phrase) is expanded, and the longest match of the
pattern (yellow) is matched against it. The match is then replaced by the provided
string (red). As you can observe only the first occurrence is replaced, so the
lemon remains yellow! If we want to change all the occurrences of the pattern, we must prefix
it with the / character:
$ phrase="yellow is the sun and yellow is the
lemon"
$ echo "${phrase//yellow/red}"
red is the sun and red is the lemon
This time all the occurrences of "yellow" has been replaced by "red". As you can see the
pattern is matched wherever it is found in the string resulting from the expansion of
parameter . If we want to specify that it must be matched only at the beginning or
at the end of the string, we must prefix it respectively with the # or
% character.
Just like in the previous cases, if parameter is an array subscripted by either
* or @ , the substitution happens in each one of its elements:
$ my_array=(one two three)
$ echo "${my_array[@]/o/u}"
une twu three
Substring expansion
The ${parameter:offset} and ${parameter:offset:length} expansions
let us expand only a part of the parameter, returning a substring starting at the specified
offset and length characters long. If the length is not specified the
expansion proceeds until the end of the original string. This type of expansion is called
substring expansion :
$ name="Egidio Docile"
$ echo "${name:3}"
dio Docile
In the example above we provided just the offset , without specifying the
length , therefore the result of the expansion was the substring obtained by
starting at the character specified by the offset (3).
If we specify a length, the substring will start at offset and will be
length characters long:
$ echo "${name:3:3}"
dio
If the offset is negative, it is calculated from the end of the string. In this
case an additional space must be added after : otherwise the shell will consider
it as another type of expansion identified by :- which is used to provide a
default value if the parameter to be expanded doesn't exist (we talked about it in the
article
about managing the expansion of empty or unset bash variables ):
$ echo "${name: -6}"
Docile
If the provided length is negative, instead of being interpreted as the total
number of characters the resulting string should be long, it is considered as an offset to be
calculated from the end of the string. The result of the expansion will therefore be a
substring starting at offset and ending at length characters from the
end of the original string:
$ echo "${name:7:-3}"
Doc
When using this expansion and parameter is an indexed array subscribed by
* or @ , the offset is relative to the indexes of the
array elements. For example:
$ my_array=(one two three)
$ echo "${my_array[@]:0:2}"
one two
$ echo "${my_array[@]: -2}"
two three
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: June 22 2017 Unix/Linux bash shell script FAQ: How do I
prompt a user for input from a shell script (Bash shell script), and then read the input the
user provides?
Answer: I usually use the shell script read function to read input from a shell
script. Here are two slightly different versions of the same shell script. This first version
prompts the user for input only once, and then dies if the user doesn't give a correct Y/N
answer:
# (1) prompt user, and read command line argument
read -p "Run the cron script now? " answer
# (2) handle the command line argument we were given
while true
do
case $answer in
[yY]* ) /usr/bin/wget -O - -q -t 1 http://www.example.com/cron.php
echo "Okay, just ran the cron script."
break;;
[nN]* ) exit;;
* ) echo "Dude, just enter Y or N, please."; break ;;
esac
done
This second version stays in a loop until the user supplies a Y/N answer:
while true
do
# (1) prompt user, and read command line argument
read -p "Run the cron script now? " answer
# (2) handle the input we were given
case $answer in
[yY]* ) /usr/bin/wget -O - -q -t 1 http://www.example.com/cron.php
echo "Okay, just ran the cron script."
break;;
[nN]* ) exit;;
* ) echo "Dude, just enter Y or N, please.";;
esac
done
I prefer the second approach, but I thought I'd share both of them here. They are subtly
different, so not the extra break in the first script.
This Linux Bash 'read' function is nice, because it does both things, prompting the user for
input, and then reading the input. The other nice thing it does is leave the cursor at the end
of your prompt, as shown here:
Run the cron script now? _
(This is so much nicer than what I had to do years ago.)
Bash uses Emacs style keyboard shortcuts by default. There is also Vi
mode. Find out how to bind HSTR to a keyboard shortcut based on the style you prefer below.
Check your active Bash keymap with:
bind -v | grep editing-mode
bind -v | grep keymap
To determine character sequence emitted by a pressed key in terminal, type Ctrlv
and then press the key. Check your current bindings using:
bind -S
Bash Emacs Keymap (default)
Bind HSTR to a Bash key e.g. to Ctrlr :
bind '"\C-r": "\C-ahstr -- \C-j"'
or CtrlAltr :
bind '"\e\C-r":"\C-ahstr -- \C-j"'
or CtrlF12 :
bind '"\e[24;5~":"\C-ahstr -- \C-j"'
Bind HSTR to Ctrlr only if it is interactive shell:
if [[ $- =~ .*i.* ]]; then bind '"\C-r": "\C-a hstr -- \C-j"'; fi
You can bind also other HSTR commands like --kill-last-command :
if [[ $- =~ .*i.* ]]; then bind '"\C-xk": "\C-a hstr -k \C-j"'; fi
Bash Vim Keymap
Bind HSTR to a Bash key e.g. to Ctrlr :
bind '"\C-r": "\e0ihstr -- \C-j"'
Zsh Emacs Keymap
Bind HSTR to a zsh key e.g. to Ctrlr :
bindkey -s "\C-r" "\eqhstr --\n"
Alias
If you want to make running of hstr from command line even easier, then define
alias in your ~/.bashrc :
alias hh=hstr
Don't forget to source ~/.bashrc to be able to to use hh
command.
Colors
Let HSTR to use colors:
export HSTR_CONFIG=hicolor
or ensure black and white mode:
export HSTR_CONFIG=monochromatic
Default History View
To show normal history by default (instead of metrics-based view, which is default) use:
export HSTR_CONFIG=raw-history-view
To show favorite commands as default view use:
export HSTR_CONFIG=favorites-view
Filtering
To use regular expressions based matching:
export HSTR_CONFIG=regexp-matching
To use substring based matching:
export HSTR_CONFIG=substring-matching
To use keywords (substrings whose order doesn't matter) search matching (default):
export HSTR_CONFIG=keywords-matching
Make search case sensitive (insensitive by default):
export HSTR_CONFIG=case-sensitive
Keep duplicates in raw-history-view (duplicate commands are discarded by
default):
export HSTR_CONFIG=duplicates
Static favorites
Last selected favorite command is put the head of favorite commands list by default. If you
want to disable this behavior and make favorite commands list static, then use the following
configuration:
export HSTR_CONFIG=static-favorites
Skip favorites comments
If you don't want to show lines starting with # (comments) among favorites,
then use the following configuration:
export HSTR_CONFIG=skip-favorites-comments
Blacklist
Skip commands when processing history i.e. make sure that these commands will not
be shown in any view:
export HSTR_CONFIG=blacklist
Commands to be stored in ~/.hstr_blacklist file with trailing empty line. For
instance:
cd
my-private-command
ls
ll
Confirm on Delete
Do not prompt for confirmation when deleting history items:
export HSTR_CONFIG=no-confirm
Verbosity
Show a message when deleting the last command from history:
export HSTR_CONFIG=verbose-kill
Show warnings:
export HSTR_CONFIG=warning
Show debug messages:
export HSTR_CONFIG=debug
Bash History Settings
Use the following Bash settings to get most out of HSTR.
Increase the size of history maintained by BASH - variables defined below increase the
number of history items and history file size (default value is 500):
This is #1 Google hit but there's controversy in the answer because the question unfortunately asks about delimiting on
, (comma-space) and not a single character such as comma. If you're only interested in the latter, answers here
are easier to follow:
stackoverflow.com/questions/918886/
– antak
Jun 18 '18 at 9:22
Note that the characters in $IFS are treated individually as separators so that in this case fields may be separated
by either a comma or a space rather than the sequence of the two characters. Interestingly though, empty fields aren't
created when comma-space appears in the input because the space is treated specially.
To access an individual element:
echo "${array[0]}"
To iterate over the elements:
for element in "${array[@]}"
do
echo "$element"
done
To get both the index and the value:
for index in "${!array[@]}"
do
echo "$index ${array[index]}"
done
The last example is useful because Bash arrays are sparse. In other words, you can delete an element or add an element and
then the indices are not contiguous.
unset "array[1]"
array[42]=Earth
To get the number of elements in an array:
echo "${#array[@]}"
As mentioned above, arrays can be sparse so you shouldn't use the length to get the last element. Here's how you can in Bash
4.2 and later:
echo "${array[-1]}"
in any version of Bash (from somewhere after 2.05b):
echo "${array[@]: -1:1}"
Larger negative offsets select farther from the end of the array. Note the space before the minus sign in the older form. It
is required.
Just use IFS=', ' , then you don't have to remove the spaces separately. Test: IFS=', ' read -a array <<< "Paris,
France, Europe"; echo "${array[@]}" – l0b0
May 14 '12 at 15:24
Warning: the IFS variable means split by one of these characters , so it's not a sequence of chars to split by. IFS=',
' read -a array <<< "a,d r s,w" => ${array[*]} == a d r s w –
caesarsol
Oct 29 '15 at 14:45
string="1:2:3:4:5"
set -f # avoid globbing (expansion of *).
array=(${string//:/ })
for i in "${!array[@]}"
do
echo "$i=>${array[i]}"
done
The idea is using string replacement:
${string//substring/replacement}
to replace all matches of $substring with white space and then using the substituted string to initialize a array:
(element1 element2 ... elementN)
Note: this answer makes use of the split+glob operator
. Thus, to prevent expansion of some characters (such as * ) it is a good idea to pause globbing for this script.
Used this approach... until I came across a long string to split. 100% CPU for more than a minute (then I killed it). It's a pity
because this method allows to split by a string, not some character in IFS. –
Werner Lehmann
May 4 '13 at 22:32
WARNING: Just ran into a problem with this approach. If you have an element named * you will get all the elements of your cwd
as well. thus string="1:2:3:4:*" will give some unexpected and possibly dangerous results depending on your implementation. Did
not get the same error with (IFS=', ' read -a array <<< "$string") and this one seems safe to use. –
Dieter Gribnitz
Sep 2 '14 at 15:46
1: This is a misuse of $IFS . The value of the $IFS variable is not taken as a single variable-length
string separator, rather it is taken as a set of single-character string separators, where each field that
read splits off from the input line can be terminated by any character in the set (comma or space, in this example).
Actually, for the real sticklers out there, the full meaning of $IFS is slightly more involved. From the
bash manual
:
The shell treats each character of IFS as a delimiter, and splits the results of the other expansions into words using these
characters as field terminators. If IFS is unset, or its value is exactly <space><tab><newline> , the default, then sequences
of <space> , <tab> , and <newline> at the beginning and end of the results of the previous expansions are ignored, and any
sequence of IFS characters not at the beginning or end serves to delimit words. If IFS has a value other than the default,
then sequences of the whitespace characters <space> , <tab> , and <newline> are ignored at the beginning and end of the word,
as long as the whitespace character is in the value of IFS (an IFS whitespace character). Any character in IFS that is not
IFS whitespace, along with any adjacent IFS whitespace characters, delimits a field. A sequence of IFS whitespace characters
is also treated as a delimiter. If the value of IFS is null, no word splitting occurs.
Basically, for non-default non-null values of $IFS , fields can be separated with either (1) a sequence of one
or more characters that are all from the set of "IFS whitespace characters" (that is, whichever of <space> , <tab> , and <newline>
("newline" meaning line feed (LF) ) are present anywhere in
$IFS ), or (2) any non-"IFS whitespace character" that's present in $IFS along with whatever "IFS whitespace
characters" surround it in the input line.
For the OP, it's possible that the second separation mode I described in the previous paragraph is exactly what he wants for
his input string, but we can be pretty confident that the first separation mode I described is not correct at all. For example,
what if his input string was 'Los Angeles, United States, North America' ?
IFS=', ' read -ra a <<<'Los Angeles, United States, North America'; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="Los" [1]="Angeles" [2]="United" [3]="States" [4]="North" [5]="America")
2: Even if you were to use this solution with a single-character separator (such as a comma by itself, that is, with no following
space or other baggage), if the value of the $string variable happens to contain any LFs, then read
will stop processing once it encounters the first LF. The read builtin only processes one line per invocation. This
is true even if you are piping or redirecting input only to the read statement, as we are doing in this example
with the here-string
mechanism, and thus unprocessed input is guaranteed to be lost. The code that powers the read builtin has no knowledge
of the data flow within its containing command structure.
You could argue that this is unlikely to cause a problem, but still, it's a subtle hazard that should be avoided if possible.
It is caused by the fact that the read builtin actually does two levels of input splitting: first into lines, then
into fields. Since the OP only wants one level of splitting, this usage of the read builtin is not appropriate, and
we should avoid it.
3: A non-obvious potential issue with this solution is that read always drops the trailing field if it is empty,
although it preserves empty fields otherwise. Here's a demo:
string=', , a, , b, c, , , '; IFS=', ' read -ra a <<<"$string"; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="" [1]="" [2]="a" [3]="" [4]="b" [5]="c" [6]="" [7]="")
Maybe the OP wouldn't care about this, but it's still a limitation worth knowing about. It reduces the robustness and generality
of the solution.
This problem can be solved by appending a dummy trailing delimiter to the input string just prior to feeding it to read
, as I will demonstrate later.
string="1,2,3,4"
array=(`echo $string | sed 's/,/\n/g'`)
These solutions leverage word splitting in an array assignment to split the string into fields. Funnily enough, just like
read , general word splitting also uses the $IFS special variable, although in this case it is implied
that it is set to its default value of <space><tab><newline> , and therefore any sequence of one or more IFS characters (which
are all whitespace characters now) is considered to be a field delimiter.
This solves the problem of two levels of splitting committed by read , since word splitting by itself constitutes
only one level of splitting. But just as before, the problem here is that the individual fields in the input string can already
contain $IFS characters, and thus they would be improperly split during the word splitting operation. This happens
to not be the case for any of the sample input strings provided by these answerers (how convenient...), but of course that doesn't
change the fact that any code base that used this idiom would then run the risk of blowing up if this assumption were ever violated
at some point down the line. Once again, consider my counterexample of 'Los Angeles, United States, North America'
(or 'Los Angeles:United States:North America' ).
Also, word splitting is normally followed by
filename
expansion ( aka pathname expansion aka globbing), which, if done, would potentially corrupt words containing
the characters * , ? , or [ followed by ] (and, if extglob is
set, parenthesized fragments preceded by ? , * , + , @ , or !
) by matching them against file system objects and expanding the words ("globs") accordingly. The first of these three answerers
has cleverly undercut this problem by running set -f beforehand to disable globbing. Technically this works (although
you should probably add set +f afterward to reenable globbing for subsequent code which may depend on it), but it's
undesirable to have to mess with global shell settings in order to hack a basic string-to-array parsing operation in local code.
Another issue with this answer is that all empty fields will be lost. This may or may not be a problem, depending on the application.
Note: If you're going to use this solution, it's better to use the ${string//:/ } "pattern substitution" form
of
parameter expansion , rather than going to the trouble of invoking a command substitution (which forks the shell), starting
up a pipeline, and running an external executable ( tr or sed ), since parameter expansion is purely
a shell-internal operation. (Also, for the tr and sed solutions, the input variable should be double-quoted
inside the command substitution; otherwise word splitting would take effect in the echo command and potentially mess
with the field values. Also, the $(...) form of command substitution is preferable to the old `...`
form since it simplifies nesting of command substitutions and allows for better syntax highlighting by text editors.)
str="a, b, c, d" # assuming there is a space after ',' as in Q
arr=(${str//,/}) # delete all occurrences of ','
This answer is almost the same as #2 . The difference is that the answerer has made the assumption that the fields are delimited
by two characters, one of which being represented in the default $IFS , and the other not. He has solved this rather
specific case by removing the non-IFS-represented character using a pattern substitution expansion and then using word splitting
to split the fields on the surviving IFS-represented delimiter character.
This is not a very generic solution. Furthermore, it can be argued that the comma is really the "primary" delimiter character
here, and that stripping it and then depending on the space character for field splitting is simply wrong. Once again, consider
my counterexample: 'Los Angeles, United States, North America' .
Also, again, filename expansion could corrupt the expanded words, but this can be prevented by temporarily disabling globbing
for the assignment with set -f and then set +f .
Also, again, all empty fields will be lost, which may or may not be a problem depending on the application.
string='first line
second line
third line'
oldIFS="$IFS"
IFS='
'
IFS=${IFS:0:1} # this is useful to format your code with tabs
lines=( $string )
IFS="$oldIFS"
This is similar to #2 and #3 in that it uses word splitting to get the job done, only now the code explicitly sets $IFS
to contain only the single-character field delimiter present in the input string. It should be repeated that this cannot work
for multicharacter field delimiters such as the OP's comma-space delimiter. But for a single-character delimiter like the LF used
in this example, it actually comes close to being perfect. The fields cannot be unintentionally split in the middle as we saw
with previous wrong answers, and there is only one level of splitting, as required.
One problem is that filename expansion will corrupt affected words as described earlier, although once again this can be solved
by wrapping the critical statement in set -f and set +f .
Another potential problem is that, since LF qualifies as an "IFS whitespace character" as defined earlier, all empty fields
will be lost, just as in #2 and #3 . This would of course not be a problem if the delimiter happens to be a non-"IFS whitespace
character", and depending on the application it may not matter anyway, but it does vitiate the generality of the solution.
So, to sum up, assuming you have a one-character delimiter, and it is either a non-"IFS whitespace character" or you don't
care about empty fields, and you wrap the critical statement in set -f and set +f , then this solution
works, but otherwise not.
(Also, for information's sake, assigning a LF to a variable in bash can be done more easily with the $'...' syntax,
e.g. IFS=$'\n'; .)
This solution is effectively a cross between #1 (in that it sets $IFS to comma-space) and #2-4 (in that it uses
word splitting to split the string into fields). Because of this, it suffers from most of the problems that afflict all of the
above wrong answers, sort of like the worst of all worlds.
Also, regarding the second variant, it may seem like the eval call is completely unnecessary, since its argument
is a single-quoted string literal, and therefore is statically known. But there's actually a very non-obvious benefit to using
eval in this way. Normally, when you run a simple command which consists of a variable assignment only , meaning
without an actual command word following it, the assignment takes effect in the shell environment:
IFS=', '; ## changes $IFS in the shell environment
This is true even if the simple command involves multiple variable assignments; again, as long as there's no command
word, all variable assignments affect the shell environment:
IFS=', ' array=($countries); ## changes both $IFS and $array in the shell environment
But, if the variable assignment is attached to a command name (I like to call this a "prefix assignment") then it does not
affect the shell environment, and instead only affects the environment of the executed command, regardless whether it is a builtin
or external:
IFS=', ' :; ## : is a builtin command, the $IFS assignment does not outlive it
IFS=', ' env; ## env is an external command, the $IFS assignment does not outlive it
If no command name results, the variable assignments affect the current shell environment. Otherwise, the variables are
added to the environment of the executed command and do not affect the current shell environment.
It is possible to exploit this feature of variable assignment to change $IFS only temporarily, which allows us
to avoid the whole save-and-restore gambit like that which is being done with the $OIFS variable in the first variant.
But the challenge we face here is that the command we need to run is itself a mere variable assignment, and hence it would not
involve a command word to make the $IFS assignment temporary. You might think to yourself, well why not just add
a no-op command word to the statement like the
: builtin to make the $IFS assignment temporary? This does not work because it would then make the
$array assignment temporary as well:
IFS=', ' array=($countries) :; ## fails; new $array value never escapes the : command
So, we're effectively at an impasse, a bit of a catch-22. But, when eval runs its code, it runs it in the shell
environment, as if it was normal, static source code, and therefore we can run the $array assignment inside the
eval argument to have it take effect in the shell environment, while the $IFS prefix assignment that
is prefixed to the eval command will not outlive the eval command. This is exactly the trick that is
being used in the second variant of this solution:
IFS=', ' eval 'array=($string)'; ## $IFS does not outlive the eval command, but $array does
So, as you can see, it's actually quite a clever trick, and accomplishes exactly what is required (at least with respect to
assignment effectation) in a rather non-obvious way. I'm actually not against this trick in general, despite the involvement of
eval ; just be careful to single-quote the argument string to guard against security threats.
But again, because of the "worst of all worlds" agglomeration of problems, this is still a wrong answer to the OP's requirement.
IFS=', '; array=(Paris, France, Europe)
IFS=' ';declare -a array=(Paris France Europe)
Um... what? The OP has a string variable that needs to be parsed into an array. This "answer" starts with the verbatim contents
of the input string pasted into an array literal. I guess that's one way to do it.
It looks like the answerer may have assumed that the $IFS variable affects all bash parsing in all contexts, which
is not true. From the bash manual:
IFS The Internal Field Separator that is used for word splitting after expansion and to split lines into words with the
read builtin command. The default value is <space><tab><newline> .
So the $IFS special variable is actually only used in two contexts: (1) word splitting that is performed after
expansion (meaning not when parsing bash source code) and (2) for splitting input lines into words by the read
builtin.
Let me try to make this clearer. I think it might be good to draw a distinction between parsing and execution
. Bash must first parse the source code, which obviously is a parsing event, and then later it executes the
code, which is when expansion comes into the picture. Expansion is really an execution event. Furthermore, I take issue
with the description of the $IFS variable that I just quoted above; rather than saying that word splitting is performed
after expansion , I would say that word splitting is performed during expansion, or, perhaps even more precisely,
word splitting is part of the expansion process. The phrase "word splitting" refers only to this step of expansion; it
should never be used to refer to the parsing of bash source code, although unfortunately the docs do seem to throw around the
words "split" and "words" a lot. Here's a relevant excerpt from the
linux.die.net version of the bash manual:
Expansion is performed on the command line after it has been split into words. There are seven kinds of expansion performed:
brace expansion , tilde expansion , parameter and variable expansion , command substitution ,
arithmetic expansion , word splitting , and pathname expansion .
The order of expansions is: brace expansion; tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, and
command substitution (done in a left-to-right fashion); word splitting; and pathname expansion.
You could argue the
GNU version
of the manual does slightly better, since it opts for the word "tokens" instead of "words" in the first sentence of the Expansion
section:
Expansion is performed on the command line after it has been split into tokens.
The important point is, $IFS does not change the way bash parses source code. Parsing of bash source code is actually
a very complex process that involves recognition of the various elements of shell grammar, such as command sequences, command
lists, pipelines, parameter expansions, arithmetic substitutions, and command substitutions. For the most part, the bash parsing
process cannot be altered by user-level actions like variable assignments (actually, there are some minor exceptions to this rule;
for example, see the various
compatxx
shell settings , which can change certain aspects of parsing behavior on-the-fly). The upstream "words"/"tokens" that result
from this complex parsing process are then expanded according to the general process of "expansion" as broken down in the above
documentation excerpts, where word splitting of the expanded (expanding?) text into downstream words is simply one step of that
process. Word splitting only touches text that has been spit out of a preceding expansion step; it does not affect literal text
that was parsed right off the source bytestream.
string='first line
second line
third line'
while read -r line; do lines+=("$line"); done <<<"$string"
This is one of the best solutions. Notice that we're back to using read . Didn't I say earlier that read
is inappropriate because it performs two levels of splitting, when we only need one? The trick here is that you can call
read in such a way that it effectively only does one level of splitting, specifically by splitting off only one field per
invocation, which necessitates the cost of having to call it repeatedly in a loop. It's a bit of a sleight of hand, but it works.
But there are problems. First: When you provide at least one NAME argument to read , it automatically ignores
leading and trailing whitespace in each field that is split off from the input string. This occurs whether $IFS is
set to its default value or not, as described earlier in this post. Now, the OP may not care about this for his specific use-case,
and in fact, it may be a desirable feature of the parsing behavior. But not everyone who wants to parse a string into fields will
want this. There is a solution, however: A somewhat non-obvious usage of read is to pass zero NAME arguments.
In this case, read will store the entire input line that it gets from the input stream in a variable named
$REPLY , and, as a bonus, it does not strip leading and trailing whitespace from the value. This is a very robust
usage of read which I've exploited frequently in my shell programming career. Here's a demonstration of the difference
in behavior:
string=$' a b \n c d \n e f '; ## input string
a=(); while read -r line; do a+=("$line"); done <<<"$string"; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="a b" [1]="c d" [2]="e f") ## read trimmed surrounding whitespace
a=(); while read -r; do a+=("$REPLY"); done <<<"$string"; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]=" a b " [1]=" c d " [2]=" e f ") ## no trimming
The second issue with this solution is that it does not actually address the case of a custom field separator, such as the
OP's comma-space. As before, multicharacter separators are not supported, which is an unfortunate limitation of this solution.
We could try to at least split on comma by specifying the separator to the -d option, but look what happens:
string='Paris, France, Europe';
a=(); while read -rd,; do a+=("$REPLY"); done <<<"$string"; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="Paris" [1]=" France")
Predictably, the unaccounted surrounding whitespace got pulled into the field values, and hence this would have to be corrected
subsequently through trimming operations (this could also be done directly in the while-loop). But there's another obvious error:
Europe is missing! What happened to it? The answer is that read returns a failing return code if it hits end-of-file
(in this case we can call it end-of-string) without encountering a final field terminator on the final field. This causes the
while-loop to break prematurely and we lose the final field.
Technically this same error afflicted the previous examples as well; the difference there is that the field separator was taken
to be LF, which is the default when you don't specify the -d option, and the <<< ("here-string") mechanism
automatically appends a LF to the string just before it feeds it as input to the command. Hence, in those cases, we sort of
accidentally solved the problem of a dropped final field by unwittingly appending an additional dummy terminator to the input.
Let's call this solution the "dummy-terminator" solution. We can apply the dummy-terminator solution manually for any custom delimiter
by concatenating it against the input string ourselves when instantiating it in the here-string:
a=(); while read -rd,; do a+=("$REPLY"); done <<<"$string,"; declare -p a;
declare -a a=([0]="Paris" [1]=" France" [2]=" Europe")
There, problem solved. Another solution is to only break the while-loop if both (1) read returned failure and
(2) $REPLY is empty, meaning read was not able to read any characters prior to hitting end-of-file.
Demo:
a=(); while read -rd,|| [[ -n "$REPLY" ]]; do a+=("$REPLY"); done <<<"$string"; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="Paris" [1]=" France" [2]=$' Europe\n')
This approach also reveals the secretive LF that automatically gets appended to the here-string by the <<< redirection
operator. It could of course be stripped off separately through an explicit trimming operation as described a moment ago, but
obviously the manual dummy-terminator approach solves it directly, so we could just go with that. The manual dummy-terminator
solution is actually quite convenient in that it solves both of these two problems (the dropped-final-field problem and the appended-LF
problem) in one go.
So, overall, this is quite a powerful solution. It's only remaining weakness is a lack of support for multicharacter delimiters,
which I will address later.
string='first line
second line
third line'
readarray -t lines <<<"$string"
(This is actually from the same post as #7 ; the answerer provided two solutions in the same post.)
The readarray builtin, which is a synonym for mapfile , is ideal. It's a builtin command which parses
a bytestream into an array variable in one shot; no messing with loops, conditionals, substitutions, or anything else. And it
doesn't surreptitiously strip any whitespace from the input string. And (if -O is not given) it conveniently clears
the target array before assigning to it. But it's still not perfect, hence my criticism of it as a "wrong answer".
First, just to get this out of the way, note that, just like the behavior of read when doing field-parsing,
readarray drops the trailing field if it is empty. Again, this is probably not a concern for the OP, but it could
be for some use-cases. I'll come back to this in a moment.
Second, as before, it does not support multicharacter delimiters. I'll give a fix for this in a moment as well.
Third, the solution as written does not parse the OP's input string, and in fact, it cannot be used as-is to parse it. I'll
expand on this momentarily as well.
For the above reasons, I still consider this to be a "wrong answer" to the OP's question. Below I'll give what I consider to
be the right answer.
Right answer
Here's a naïve attempt to make #8 work by just specifying the -d option:
string='Paris, France, Europe';
readarray -td, a <<<"$string"; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="Paris" [1]=" France" [2]=$' Europe\n')
We see the result is identical to the result we got from the double-conditional approach of the looping read solution
discussed in #7 . We can almost solve this with the manual dummy-terminator trick:
readarray -td, a <<<"$string,"; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="Paris" [1]=" France" [2]=" Europe" [3]=$'\n')
The problem here is that readarray preserved the trailing field, since the <<< redirection operator
appended the LF to the input string, and therefore the trailing field was not empty (otherwise it would've been dropped).
We can take care of this by explicitly unsetting the final array element after-the-fact:
readarray -td, a <<<"$string,"; unset 'a[-1]'; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="Paris" [1]=" France" [2]=" Europe")
The only two problems that remain, which are actually related, are (1) the extraneous whitespace that needs to be trimmed,
and (2) the lack of support for multicharacter delimiters.
The whitespace could of course be trimmed afterward (for example, see
How to trim whitespace
from a Bash variable? ). But if we can hack a multicharacter delimiter, then that would solve both problems in one shot.
Unfortunately, there's no direct way to get a multicharacter delimiter to work. The best solution I've thought of is
to preprocess the input string to replace the multicharacter delimiter with a single-character delimiter that will be guaranteed
not to collide with the contents of the input string. The only character that has this guarantee is the
NUL byte . This is because, in bash (though not in
zsh, incidentally), variables cannot contain the NUL byte. This preprocessing step can be done inline in a process substitution.
Here's how to do it using awk :
There, finally! This solution will not erroneously split fields in the middle, will not cut out prematurely, will not drop
empty fields, will not corrupt itself on filename expansions, will not automatically strip leading and trailing whitespace, will
not leave a stowaway LF on the end, does not require loops, and does not settle for a single-character delimiter.
Trimming solution
Lastly, I wanted to demonstrate my own fairly intricate trimming solution using the obscure -C callback option
of readarray . Unfortunately, I've run out of room against Stack Overflow's draconian 30,000 character post limit,
so I won't be able to explain it. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
function mfcb { local val="$4"; "$1"; eval "$2[$3]=\$val;"; };
function val_ltrim { if [[ "$val" =~ ^[[:space:]]+ ]]; then val="${val:${#BASH_REMATCH[0]}}"; fi; };
function val_rtrim { if [[ "$val" =~ [[:space:]]+$ ]]; then val="${val:0:${#val}-${#BASH_REMATCH[0]}}"; fi; };
function val_trim { val_ltrim; val_rtrim; };
readarray -c1 -C 'mfcb val_trim a' -td, <<<"$string,"; unset 'a[-1]'; declare -p a;
## declare -a a=([0]="Paris" [1]="France" [2]="Europe")
It may also be helpful to note (though understandably you had no room to do so) that the -d option to readarray
first appears in Bash 4.4. – fbicknel
Aug 18 '17 at 15:57
Great answer (+1). If you change your awk to awk '{ gsub(/,[ ]+|$/,"\0"); print }' and eliminate that concatenation
of the final ", " then you don't have to go through the gymnastics on eliminating the final record. So: readarray
-td '' a < <(awk '{ gsub(/,[ ]+/,"\0"); print; }' <<<"$string") on Bash that supports readarray . Note your
method is Bash 4.4+ I think because of the -d in readarray –
dawg
Nov 26 '17 at 22:28
@datUser That's unfortunate. Your version of bash must be too old for readarray . In this case, you can use the second-best
solution built on read . I'm referring to this: a=(); while read -rd,; do a+=("$REPLY"); done <<<"$string,";
(with the awk substitution if you need multicharacter delimiter support). Let me know if you run into any problems;
I'm pretty sure this solution should work on fairly old versions of bash, back to version 2-something, released like two decades
ago. – bgoldst
Feb 23 '18 at 3:37
This does not work as stated. @Jmoney38 or shrimpwagon if you can paste this in a terminal and get the desired output, please
paste the result here. – abalter
Aug 30 '16 at 5:13
Sometimes it happened to me that the method described in the accepted answer didn't work, especially if the separator is a carriage
return.
In those cases I solved in this way:
string='first line
second line
third line'
oldIFS="$IFS"
IFS='
'
IFS=${IFS:0:1} # this is useful to format your code with tabs
lines=( $string )
IFS="$oldIFS"
for line in "${lines[@]}"
do
echo "--> $line"
done
+1 This completely worked for me. I needed to put multiple strings, divided by a newline, into an array, and read -a arr
<<< "$strings" did not work with IFS=$'\n' . –
Stefan van den Akker
Feb 9 '15 at 16:52
While not every solution works for every situation, your mention of readarray... replaced my last two hours with 5 minutes...
you got my vote – Mayhem
Dec 31 '15 at 3:13
The key to splitting your string into an array is the multi character delimiter of ", " . Any solution using
IFS for multi character delimiters is inherently wrong since IFS is a set of those characters, not a string.
If you assign IFS=", " then the string will break on EITHER "," OR " " or any combination
of them which is not an accurate representation of the two character delimiter of ", " .
You can use awk or sed to split the string, with process substitution:
#!/bin/bash
str="Paris, France, Europe"
array=()
while read -r -d $'\0' each; do # use a NUL terminated field separator
array+=("$each")
done < <(printf "%s" "$str" | awk '{ gsub(/,[ ]+|$/,"\0"); print }')
declare -p array
# declare -a array=([0]="Paris" [1]="France" [2]="Europe") output
It is more efficient to use a regex you directly in Bash:
#!/bin/bash
str="Paris, France, Europe"
array=()
while [[ $str =~ ([^,]+)(,[ ]+|$) ]]; do
array+=("${BASH_REMATCH[1]}") # capture the field
i=${#BASH_REMATCH} # length of field + delimiter
str=${str:i} # advance the string by that length
done # the loop deletes $str, so make a copy if needed
declare -p array
# declare -a array=([0]="Paris" [1]="France" [2]="Europe") output...
With the second form, there is no sub shell and it will be inherently faster.
Edit by bgoldst: Here are some benchmarks comparing my readarray solution to dawg's regex solution, and I also
included the read solution for the heck of it (note: I slightly modified the regex solution for greater harmony with
my solution) (also see my comments below the post):
## competitors
function c_readarray { readarray -td '' a < <(awk '{ gsub(/, /,"\0"); print; };' <<<"$1, "); unset 'a[-1]'; };
function c_read { a=(); local REPLY=''; while read -r -d ''; do a+=("$REPLY"); done < <(awk '{ gsub(/, /,"\0"); print; };' <<<"$1, "); };
function c_regex { a=(); local s="$1, "; while [[ $s =~ ([^,]+),\ ]]; do a+=("${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"); s=${s:${#BASH_REMATCH}}; done; };
## helper functions
function rep {
local -i i=-1;
for ((i = 0; i<$1; ++i)); do
printf %s "$2";
done;
}; ## end rep()
function testAll {
local funcs=();
local args=();
local func='';
local -i rc=-1;
while [[ "$1" != ':' ]]; do
func="$1";
if [[ ! "$func" =~ ^[_a-zA-Z][_a-zA-Z0-9]*$ ]]; then
echo "bad function name: $func" >&2;
return 2;
fi;
funcs+=("$func");
shift;
done;
shift;
args=("$@");
for func in "${funcs[@]}"; do
echo -n "$func ";
{ time $func "${args[@]}" >/dev/null 2>&1; } 2>&1| tr '\n' '/';
rc=${PIPESTATUS[0]}; if [[ $rc -ne 0 ]]; then echo "[$rc]"; else echo; fi;
done| column -ts/;
}; ## end testAll()
function makeStringToSplit {
local -i n=$1; ## number of fields
if [[ $n -lt 0 ]]; then echo "bad field count: $n" >&2; return 2; fi;
if [[ $n -eq 0 ]]; then
echo;
elif [[ $n -eq 1 ]]; then
echo 'first field';
elif [[ "$n" -eq 2 ]]; then
echo 'first field, last field';
else
echo "first field, $(rep $[$1-2] 'mid field, ')last field";
fi;
}; ## end makeStringToSplit()
function testAll_splitIntoArray {
local -i n=$1; ## number of fields in input string
local s='';
echo "===== $n field$(if [[ $n -ne 1 ]]; then echo 's'; fi;) =====";
s="$(makeStringToSplit "$n")";
testAll c_readarray c_read c_regex : "$s";
}; ## end testAll_splitIntoArray()
## results
testAll_splitIntoArray 1;
## ===== 1 field =====
## c_readarray real 0m0.067s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
## c_read real 0m0.064s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
## c_regex real 0m0.000s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
##
testAll_splitIntoArray 10;
## ===== 10 fields =====
## c_readarray real 0m0.067s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
## c_read real 0m0.064s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
## c_regex real 0m0.001s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
##
testAll_splitIntoArray 100;
## ===== 100 fields =====
## c_readarray real 0m0.069s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.062s
## c_read real 0m0.065s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.046s
## c_regex real 0m0.005s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s
##
testAll_splitIntoArray 1000;
## ===== 1000 fields =====
## c_readarray real 0m0.084s user 0m0.031s sys 0m0.077s
## c_read real 0m0.092s user 0m0.031s sys 0m0.046s
## c_regex real 0m0.125s user 0m0.125s sys 0m0.000s
##
testAll_splitIntoArray 10000;
## ===== 10000 fields =====
## c_readarray real 0m0.209s user 0m0.093s sys 0m0.108s
## c_read real 0m0.333s user 0m0.234s sys 0m0.109s
## c_regex real 0m9.095s user 0m9.078s sys 0m0.000s
##
testAll_splitIntoArray 100000;
## ===== 100000 fields =====
## c_readarray real 0m1.460s user 0m0.326s sys 0m1.124s
## c_read real 0m2.780s user 0m1.686s sys 0m1.092s
## c_regex real 17m38.208s user 15m16.359s sys 2m19.375s
##
Very cool solution! I never thought of using a loop on a regex match, nifty use of $BASH_REMATCH . It works, and
does indeed avoid spawning subshells. +1 from me. However, by way of criticism, the regex itself is a little non-ideal, in that
it appears you were forced to duplicate part of the delimiter token (specifically the comma) so as to work around the lack of
support for non-greedy multipliers (also lookarounds) in ERE ("extended" regex flavor built into bash). This makes it a little
less generic and robust. – bgoldst
Nov 27 '17 at 4:28
Secondly, I did some benchmarking, and although the performance is better than the other solutions for smallish strings, it worsens
exponentially due to the repeated string-rebuilding, becoming catastrophic for very large strings. See my edit to your answer.
– bgoldst
Nov 27 '17 at 4:28
@bgoldst: What a cool benchmark! In defense of the regex, for 10's or 100's of thousands of fields (what the regex is splitting)
there would probably be some form of record (like \n delimited text lines) comprising those fields so the catastrophic
slow-down would likely not occur. If you have a string with 100,000 fields -- maybe Bash is not ideal ;-) Thanks for the benchmark.
I learned a thing or two. – dawg
Nov 27 '17 at 4:46
As others have pointed out in this thread, the OP's question gave an example of a comma delimited string to be parsed into
an array, but did not indicate if he/she was only interested in comma delimiters, single character delimiters, or multi-character
delimiters.
Since Google tends to rank this answer at or near the top of search results, I wanted to provide readers with a strong answer
to the question of multiple character delimiters, since that is also mentioned in at least one response.
If you're in search of a solution to a multi-character delimiter problem, I suggest reviewing
Mallikarjun M 's post, in particular the response
from gniourf_gniourf who provides this elegant
pure BASH solution using parameter expansion:
#!/bin/bash
str="LearnABCtoABCSplitABCaABCString"
delimiter=ABC
s=$str$delimiter
array=();
while [[ $s ]]; do
array+=( "${s%%"$delimiter"*}" );
s=${s#*"$delimiter"};
done;
declare -p array
countries='Paris, France, Europe'
OIFS="$IFS"
IFS=', ' array=($countries)
IFS="$OIFS"
#${array[1]} == Paris
#${array[2]} == France
#${array[3]} == Europe
Bad: subject to word splitting and pathname expansion. Please don't revive old questions with good answers to give bad answers.
– gniourf_gniourf
Dec 19 '16 at 17:22
@GeorgeSovetov: As I said, it's subject to word splitting and pathname expansion. More generally, splitting a string into an
array as array=( $string ) is a (sadly very common) antipattern: word splitting occurs: string='Prague,
Czech Republic, Europe' ; Pathname expansion occurs: string='foo[abcd],bar[efgh]' will fail if you have a
file named, e.g., food or barf in your directory. The only valid usage of such a construct is when
string is a glob. – gniourf_gniourf
Dec 26 '16 at 18:07
Pfft. No. If you're writing scripts large enough for this to matter, you're doing it wrong. In application code, eval is evil.
In shell scripting, it's common, necessary, and inconsequential. –
user1009908
Oct 30 '15 at 4:05
Splitting strings by strings is a pretty boring thing to do using bash. What happens is that we have limited approaches that
only work in a few cases (split by ";", "/", "." and so on) or we have a variety of side effects in the outputs.
The approach below has required a number of maneuvers, but I believe it will work for most of our needs!
#!/bin/bash
# --------------------------------------
# SPLIT FUNCTION
# ----------------
F_SPLIT_R=()
f_split() {
: 'It does a "split" into a given string and returns an array.
Args:
TARGET_P (str): Target string to "split".
DELIMITER_P (Optional[str]): Delimiter used to "split". If not
informed the split will be done by spaces.
Returns:
F_SPLIT_R (array): Array with the provided string separated by the
informed delimiter.
'
F_SPLIT_R=()
TARGET_P=$1
DELIMITER_P=$2
if [ -z "$DELIMITER_P" ] ; then
DELIMITER_P=" "
fi
REMOVE_N=1
if [ "$DELIMITER_P" == "\n" ] ; then
REMOVE_N=0
fi
# NOTE: This was the only parameter that has been a problem so far!
# By Questor
# [Ref.: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/390732/61742]
if [ "$DELIMITER_P" == "./" ] ; then
DELIMITER_P="[.]/"
fi
if [ ${REMOVE_N} -eq 1 ] ; then
# NOTE: Due to bash limitations we have some problems getting the
# output of a split by awk inside an array and so we need to use
# "line break" (\n) to succeed. Seen this, we remove the line breaks
# momentarily afterwards we reintegrate them. The problem is that if
# there is a line break in the "string" informed, this line break will
# be lost, that is, it is erroneously removed in the output!
# By Questor
TARGET_P=$(awk 'BEGIN {RS="dn"} {gsub("\n", "3F2C417D448C46918289218B7337FCAF"); printf $0}' <<< "${TARGET_P}")
fi
# NOTE: The replace of "\n" by "3F2C417D448C46918289218B7337FCAF" results
# in more occurrences of "3F2C417D448C46918289218B7337FCAF" than the
# amount of "\n" that there was originally in the string (one more
# occurrence at the end of the string)! We can not explain the reason for
# this side effect. The line below corrects this problem! By Questor
TARGET_P=${TARGET_P%????????????????????????????????}
SPLIT_NOW=$(awk -F"$DELIMITER_P" '{for(i=1; i<=NF; i++){printf "%s\n", $i}}' <<< "${TARGET_P}")
while IFS= read -r LINE_NOW ; do
if [ ${REMOVE_N} -eq 1 ] ; then
# NOTE: We use "'" to prevent blank lines with no other characters
# in the sequence being erroneously removed! We do not know the
# reason for this side effect! By Questor
LN_NOW_WITH_N=$(awk 'BEGIN {RS="dn"} {gsub("3F2C417D448C46918289218B7337FCAF", "\n"); printf $0}' <<< "'${LINE_NOW}'")
# NOTE: We use the commands below to revert the intervention made
# immediately above! By Questor
LN_NOW_WITH_N=${LN_NOW_WITH_N%?}
LN_NOW_WITH_N=${LN_NOW_WITH_N#?}
F_SPLIT_R+=("$LN_NOW_WITH_N")
else
F_SPLIT_R+=("$LINE_NOW")
fi
done <<< "$SPLIT_NOW"
}
# --------------------------------------
# HOW TO USE
# ----------------
STRING_TO_SPLIT="
* How do I list all databases and tables using psql?
\"
sudo -u postgres /usr/pgsql-9.4/bin/psql -c \"\l\"
sudo -u postgres /usr/pgsql-9.4/bin/psql <DB_NAME> -c \"\dt\"
\"
\"
\list or \l: list all databases
\dt: list all tables in the current database
\"
[Ref.: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/1285/how-do-i-list-all-databases-and-tables-using-psql]
"
f_split "$STRING_TO_SPLIT" "bin/psql -c"
# --------------------------------------
# OUTPUT AND TEST
# ----------------
ARR_LENGTH=${#F_SPLIT_R[*]}
for (( i=0; i<=$(( $ARR_LENGTH -1 )); i++ )) ; do
echo " > -----------------------------------------"
echo "${F_SPLIT_R[$i]}"
echo " < -----------------------------------------"
done
if [ "$STRING_TO_SPLIT" == "${F_SPLIT_R[0]}bin/psql -c${F_SPLIT_R[1]}" ] ; then
echo " > -----------------------------------------"
echo "The strings are the same!"
echo " < -----------------------------------------"
fi
Rather than changing IFS to match our desired delimiter, we can replace all occurrences of our desired delimiter ", "
with contents of $IFS via "${string//, /$IFS}" .
Maybe this will be slow for very large strings though?
I cover this idea in
my
answer ; see Wrong answer #5 (you might be especially interested in my discussion of the eval trick).
Your solution leaves $IFS set to the comma-space value after-the-fact. –
bgoldst
Aug 13 '17 at 22:38
that diagram shows what happens according to the man page, and not what happens when you actually try it out in real life. This second
diagram more accurately captures the insanity of bash:
See how remote interactive login shells read /etc/bash.bashrc, but normal interactive login shells don't? Sigh.
Finally, here's a repository containing my implementation
and the graphviz files for the above diagram. If your POSIX-compliant shell isn't listed here, or if I've made a horrible mistake
(or just a tiny one), please send me a pull request or make a comment below, and I'll update this post accordingly.
In my experience, if your bash sources /etc/bash.bashrc, odds are good it also sources /etc/bash.bash_logout
or something similar on logout (after ~/.bash_logout, of course).
Recently I wanted to deepen my understanding of bash by researching as much of it as
possible. Because I felt bash is an often-used (and under-understood) technology, I ended up
writing a book on it
.
You don't have to look hard on the internet to find plenty of useful one-liners in bash, or
scripts. And there are guides to bash that seem somewhat intimidating through either their
thoroughness or their focus on esoteric detail.
Here I've focussed on the things that either confused me or increased my power and
productivity in bash significantly, and tried to communicate them (as in my book) in a way that
emphasises getting the understanding right.
Enjoy!
1)
`` vs $()
These two operators do the same thing. Compare these two lines:
$ echo `ls`
$ echo $(ls)
Why these two forms existed confused me for a long time.
If you don't know, both forms substitute the output of the command contained within it into
the command.
The principal difference is that nesting is simpler.
Which of these is easier to read (and write)?
$ echo `echo \`echo \\\`echo inside\\\`\``
or:
$ echo $(echo $(echo $(echo inside)))
If you're interested in going deeper, see here or
here .
2) globbing vs regexps
Another one that can confuse if never thought about or researched.
While globs and regexps can look similar, they are not the same.
Consider this command:
$ rename -n 's/(.*)/new$1/' *
The two asterisks are interpreted in different ways.
The first is ignored by the shell (because it is in quotes), and is interpreted as '0 or
more characters' by the rename application. So it's interpreted as a regular expression.
The second is interpreted by the shell (because it is not in quotes), and gets replaced by a
list of all the files in the current working folder. It is interpreted as a glob.
So by looking at man bash can you figure out why these two commands produce
different output?
$ ls *
$ ls .*
The second looks even more like a regular expression. But it isn't!
3) Exit Codes
Not everyone knows that every time you run a shell command in bash, an 'exit code' is
returned to bash.
Generally, if a command 'succeeds' you get an error code of 0 . If it doesn't
succeed, you get a non-zero code. 1 is a 'general error', and others can give you
more information (eg which signal killed it, for example).
But these rules don't always hold:
$ grep not_there /dev/null
$ echo $?
$? is a special bash variable that's set to the exit code of each command after
it runs.
Grep uses exit codes to indicate whether it matched or not. I have to look up every time
which way round it goes: does finding a match or not return 0 ?
Grok this and a lot will click into place in what follows.
4) if
statements, [ and [[
Here's another 'spot the difference' similar to the backticks one above.
What will this output?
if grep not_there /dev/null
then
echo hi
else
echo lo
fi
grep's return code makes code like this work more intuitively as a side effect of its use of
exit codes.
Now what will this output?
a) hihi
b) lolo
c) something else
if [ $(grep not_there /dev/null) = '' ]
then
echo -n hi
else
echo -n lo
fi
if [[ $(grep not_there /dev/null) = '' ]]
then
echo -n hi
else
echo -n lo
fi
The difference between [ and [[ was another thing I never really
understood. [ is the original form for tests, and then [[ was
introduced, which is more flexible and intuitive. In the first if block above, the
if statement barfs because the $(grep not_there /dev/null) is evaluated to
nothing, resulting in this comparison:
[ = '' ]
which makes no sense. The double bracket form handles this for you.
This is why you occasionally see comparisons like this in bash scripts:
if [ x$(grep not_there /dev/null) = 'x' ]
so that if the command returns nothing it still runs. There's no need for it, but that's why
it exists.
5) set s
Bash has configurable options which can be set on the fly. I use two of these all the
time:
set -e
exits from a script if any command returned a non-zero exit code (see above).
This outputs the commands that get run as they run:
set -x
So a script might start like this:
#!/bin/bash
set -e
set -x
grep not_there /dev/null
echo $?
What would that script output?
6) <()
This is my favourite. It's so under-used, perhaps because it can be initially baffling, but
I use it all the time.
It's similar to $() in that the output of the command inside is re-used.
In this case, though, the output is treated as a file. This file can be used as an argument
to commands that take files as an argument.
Quoting's a knotty subject in bash, as it is in many software contexts.
Firstly, variables in quotes:
A='123'
echo "$A"
echo '$A'
Pretty simple – double quotes dereference variables, while single quotes go
literal.
So what will this output?
mkdir -p tmp
cd tmp
touch a
echo "*"
echo '*'
Surprised? I was.
8) Top three shortcuts
There are plenty of shortcuts listed in man bash , and it's not hard to find
comprehensive lists. This list consists of the ones I use most often, in order of how often I
use them.
Rather than trying to memorize them all, I recommend picking one, and trying to remember to
use it until it becomes unconscious. Then take the next one. I'll skip over the most obvious
ones (eg !! – repeat last command, and ~ – your home
directory).
!$
I use this dozens of times a day. It repeats the last argument of the last command. If
you're working on a file, and can't be bothered to re-type it command after command it can save
a lot of work:
grep somestring /long/path/to/some/file/or/other.txt
vi !$
!:1-$
This bit of magic takes this further. It takes all the arguments to the previous command and
drops them in. So:
The ! means 'look at the previous command', the : is a separator,
and the 1 means 'take the first word', the - means 'until' and the
$ means 'the last word'.
Note: you can achieve the same thing with !* . Knowing the above gives you the
control to limit to a specific contiguous subset of arguments, eg with !:2-3 .
:h
I use this one a lot too. If you put it after a filename, it will change that filename to
remove everything up to the folder. Like this:
grep isthere /long/path/to/some/file/or/other.txt
cd !$:h
which can save a lot of work in the course of the day.
9) startup order
The order in which bash runs startup scripts can cause a lot of head-scratching. I keep this
diagram handy (from this great page):
It shows which scripts bash decides to run from the top, based on decisions made about the
context bash is running in (which decides the colour to follow).
So if you are in a local (non-remote), non-login, interactive shell (eg when you run bash
itself from the command line), you are on the 'green' line, and these are the order of files
read:
/etc/bash.bashrc
~/.bashrc
[bash runs, then terminates]
~/.bash_logout
This can save you a hell of a lot of time debugging.
10) getopts (cheapci)
If you go deep with bash, you might end up writing chunky utilities in it. If you do, then
getting to grips with getopts can pay large dividends.
For fun, I once wrote a script called
cheapci which I used to work like a Jenkins job.
The code here implements the
reading of the two required, and 14
non-required arguments . Better to learn this than to build up a bunch of bespoke code that
can get very messy pretty quickly as your utility grows.
# aliases
alias la="ls -la --group-directories-first --color"
# clear terminal
alias cls="clear"
#
alias sup="sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade"
# search for package
alias apts='apt-cache search'
# start x session
alias x="startx"
# download mp3 in best quality from YouTube
# usage: ytmp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LINK
alias ytmp3="youtube-dl -f bestaudio --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 0"
# perform 'la' after 'cd'
alias cd="listDir"
listDir() {
builtin cd "$*"
RESULT=$?
if [ "$RESULT" -eq 0 ]; then
la
fi
}
# type "extract filename" to extract the file
extract () {
if [ -f $1 ] ; then
case $1 in
*.tar.bz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tar.gz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.bz2) bunzip2 $1 ;;
*.rar) unrar x $1 ;;
*.gz) gunzip $1 ;;
*.tar) tar xvf $1 ;;
*.tbz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tgz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.zip) unzip $1 ;;
*.Z) uncompress $1 ;;
*.7z) 7z x $1 ;;
*) echo "don't know how to extract '$1'..." ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a valid file!"
fi
}
# obvious one
alias ..="cd .."
alias ...="cd ../.."
alias ....="cd ../../.."
alias .....="cd ../../../.."
# tail all logs in /var/log
alias logs="find /var/log -type f -exec file {} \; | grep 'text' | cut -d' ' -f1 | sed -e's/:$//g' | grep -v '[0-9]$' | xargs
tail -f"
extract () {
if [ -f $1 ] ; then
case $1 in
*.tar.bz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tar.gz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.bz2) bunzip2 $1 ;;
*.rar) unrar x $1 ;;
*.gz) gunzip $1 ;;
*.tar) tar xvf $1 ;;
*.tbz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tgz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.zip) unzip $1 ;;
*.Z) uncompress $1 ;;
*.7z) 7z x $1 ;;
*) echo "don't know how to extract '$1'..." ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a valid file!"
fi
}
Erm, did you know that `tar` autoextracts these days? This will work for pretty much anything:
The mnt function acts like a poor person's arch-chroot and will bind mount /proc /sys & /dev before chrooting then tear it down afterwards.
The mkiso function builds a UEFI-capable Debian live system (with the name of the image given as the first argument).
The only other stuff I have are aliases, not really worth posting.
dbruce wrote: Ubuntu forums try to be like a coffee shop in Seattle. Debian forums strive for the charm and ambience
of a skinhead bar in Bacau. We intend to keep it that way.
i have a LOT of stuff in my /etc/bash.bashrc, because i want it to be available for the root user too.
i won't post everything, but here's a "best of" from both /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc:
# Bash won't get SIGWINCH if another process is in the foreground.
# Enable checkwinsize so that bash will check the terminal size when
# it regains control.
# http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/bash/FAQ (E11)
shopt -s checkwinsize
# forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?pid=27494#p27494
# also see aliases '...' and '....'
shopt -s autocd
# opensource.com/article/18/5/bash-tricks
shopt -s cdspell
# as big as possible!!!
HISTSIZE=500000
HISTFILESIZE=2000000
man() {
env LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$(printf "\e[1;31m") \
LESS_TERMCAP_md=$(printf "\e[1;31m") \
LESS_TERMCAP_me=$(printf "\e[0m") \
LESS_TERMCAP_se=$(printf "\e[0m") \
LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(printf "\e[7m") \
LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$(printf "\e[0m") \
LESS_TERMCAP_us=$(printf "\e[1;32m") \
man "$@"
}
#LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(printf "\e[1;44;33m")
# that used to be in the man function for less's annoyingly over-colorful status line.
# changed it to simple reverse video (tput rev)
alias ls='ls --group-directories-first -hF --color=auto'
alias ll='ls --group-directories-first -hF --color=auto -la'
alias mpf='/usr/bin/ls -1 | mpv --playlist=-'
alias ruler='slop -o -c 1,0.3,0'
alias xmeasure='slop -o -c 1,0.3,0'
alias obxprop='obxprop | grep -v _NET_WM_ICON'
alias sx='exec startx > ~/.local/share/xorg/xlog 2>&1'
alias pngq='pngquant --nofs --speed 1 --skip-if-larger --strip '
alias screencap='ffmpeg -r 15 -s 1680x1050 -f x11grab -i :0.0 -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -qscale 2'
alias su='su -'
alias fblc='fluxbox -list-commands | column'
alias torrench='torrench -t -k -s -x -r -l -i -b --sorted'
alias F5='while sleep 60; do notify-send -u low "Pressed F5 on:" "$(xdotool getwindowname $(xdotool getwindowfocus))"; xdotool
key F5; done'
alias aurs='aurman --sort_by_name -Ss'
alias cal3='cal -3 -m -w --color'
alias mkdir='mkdir -p -v'
alias ping='ping -c 5'
alias cd..='cd ..'
alias off='systemctl poweroff'
alias xg='xgamma -gamma'
alias find='find 2>/dev/null'
alias stressme='stress --cpu 8 --io 4 --vm 2 --vm-bytes 128M --timeout'
alias hf='history|grep'
alias du1='du -m --max-depth=1|sort -g|sed "s/\t./M\t/g ; s/\///g"'
alias zipcat='gunzip -c'
hh uses shell history to provide suggest box like functionality for commands used in the
past. By default it parses .bash-history file that is filtered as you type a command substring. Commands are not just filtered, but also ordered by a ranking algorithm that considers number
of occurrences, length and timestamp. Favorite and frequently used commands can be
bookmarked . In addition hh allows removal of commands from history - for instance with a
typo or with a sensitive content.
export HH_CONFIG=hicolor # get more colors
shopt -s histappend # append new history items to .bash_history
export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace # leading space hides commands from history
export HISTFILESIZE=10000 # increase history file size (default is 500)
export HISTSIZE=${HISTFILESIZE} # increase history size (default is 500)
export PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -n; ${PROMPT_COMMAND}"
# if this is interactive shell, then bind hh to Ctrl-r (for Vi mode check doc)
if [[ $- =~ .*i.* ]]; then bind '"\C-r": "\C-a hh -- \C-j"'; fi
The prompt command ensures synchronization of the history between BASH memory and history
file.
export HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history # ensure history file visibility
export HH_CONFIG=hicolor # get more colors
bindkey -s "\C-r" "\eqhh\n" # bind hh to Ctrl-r (for Vi mode check doc, experiment with --)
Although this is very simple to read and write, is a very slow solution because forces you to
read twice the same data ($STR) ... if you care of your script performace, the @anubhava
solution is much better – FSp
Nov 27 '12 at 10:26
Apart from being an ugly last-resort solution, this has a bug: You should absolutely use
double quotes in echo "$STR" unless you specifically want the shell to expand
any wildcards in the string as a side effect. See also stackoverflow.com/questions/10067266/
– tripleee
Jan 25 '16 at 6:47
You're right about double quotes of course, though I did point out this solution wasn't
general. However I think your assessment is a bit unfair - for some people this solution may
be more readable (and hence extensible etc) than some others, and doesn't completely rely on
arcane bash feature that wouldn't translate to other shells. I suspect that's why my
solution, though less elegant, continues to get votes periodically... – Rob I
Feb 10 '16 at 13:57
If you know it's going to be just two fields, you can skip the extra subprocesses like this:
var1=${STR%-*}
var2=${STR#*-}
What does this do? ${STR%-*} deletes the shortest substring of
$STR that matches the pattern -* starting from the end of the
string. ${STR#*-} does the same, but with the *- pattern and
starting from the beginning of the string. They each have counterparts %% and
## which find the longest anchored pattern match. If anyone has a
helpful mnemonic to remember which does which, let me know! I always have to try both to
remember.
Dunno about "absence of bashisms" considering that this is already moderately cryptic .... if
your delimiter is a newline instead of a hyphen, then it becomes even more cryptic. On the
other hand, it works with newlines , so there's that. – Steven Lu
May 1 '15 at 20:19
Mnemonic: "#" is to the left of "%" on a standard keyboard, so "#" removes a prefix (on the
left), and "%" removes a suffix (on the right). – DS.
Jan 13 '17 at 19:56
I used triplee's example and it worked exactly as advertised! Just change last two lines to
<pre> myvar1= echo $1 && myvar2= echo $2 </pre>
if you need to store them throughout a script with several "thrown" variables. –
Sigg3.net
Jun 19 '13 at 8:08
This is a really sweet solution if we need to write something that is not Bash specific. To
handle IFS troubles, one can add OLDIFS=$IFS at the beginning
before overwriting it, and then add IFS=$OLDIFS just after the set
line. – Daniel Andersson
Mar 27 '15 at 6:46
Suppose I have the string 1:2:3:4:5 and I want to get its last field (
5 in this case). How do I do that using Bash? I tried cut , but I
don't know how to specify the last field with -f .
While this is working for the given problem, the answer of William below ( stackoverflow.com/a/3163857/520162 )
also returns 5 if the string is 1:2:3:4:5: (while using the string
operators yields an empty result). This is especially handy when parsing paths that could
contain (or not) a finishing / character. – eckes
Jan 23 '13 at 15:23
And how does one keep the part before the last separator? Apparently by using
${foo%:*} . # - from beginning; % - from end.
# , % - shortest match; ## , %% - longest
match. – Mihai Danila
Jul 9 '14 at 14:07
This answer is nice because it uses 'cut', which the author is (presumably) already familiar.
Plus, I like this answer because I am using 'cut' and had this exact question, hence
finding this thread via search. – Dannid
Jan 14 '13 at 20:50
great advantage of this solution over the accepted answer: it also matches paths that contain
or do not contain a finishing / character: /a/b/c/d and
/a/b/c/d/ yield the same result ( d ) when processing pwd |
awk -F/ '{print $NF}' . The accepted answer results in an empty result in the case of
/a/b/c/d/ – eckes
Jan 23 '13 at 15:20
@eckes In case of AWK solution, on GNU bash, version 4.3.48(1)-release that's not true, as it
matters whenever you have trailing slash or not. Simply put AWK will use / as
delimiter, and if your path is /my/path/dir/ it will use value after last
delimiter, which is simply an empty string. So it's best to avoid trailing slash if you need
to do such a thing like I do. – stamster
May 21 at 11:52
This runs into problems if there is whitespace in any of the fields. Also, it does not
directly address the question of retrieving the last field. – chepner
Jun 22 '12 at 12:58
Now I would like to split the strings by ; delimiter so that I have:
ADDR1="bla@some.com"
ADDR2="john@home.com"
I don't necessarily need the ADDR1 and ADDR2 variables. If they
are elements of an array that's even better.
After suggestions from the answers below, I ended up with the following which is what I
was after:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com"
mails=$(echo $IN | tr ";" "\n")
for addr in $mails
do
echo "> [$addr]"
done
Output:
> [bla@some.com]
> [john@home.com]
There was a solution involving setting Internal_field_separator (IFS) to
; . I am not sure what happened with that answer, how do you reset
IFS back to default?
RE: IFS solution, I tried this and it works, I keep the old IFS
and then restore it:
IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com"
OIFS=$IFS
IFS=';'
mails2=$IN
for x in $mails2
do
echo "> [$x]"
done
IFS=$OIFS
BTW, when I tried
mails2=($IN)
I only got the first string when printing it in loop, without brackets around
$IN it works.
With regards to your "Edit2": You can simply "unset IFS" and it will return to the default
state. There's no need to save and restore it explicitly unless you have some reason to
expect that it's already been set to a non-default value. Moreover, if you're doing this
inside a function (and, if you aren't, why not?), you can set IFS as a local variable and it
will return to its previous value once you exit the function. – Brooks Moses
May 1 '12 at 1:26
@BrooksMoses: (a) +1 for using local IFS=... where possible; (b) -1 for
unset IFS , this doesn't exactly reset IFS to its default value, though I
believe an unset IFS behaves the same as the default value of IFS ($' \t\n'), however it
seems bad practice to be assuming blindly that your code will never be invoked with IFS set
to a custom value; (c) another idea is to invoke a subshell: (IFS=$custom; ...)
when the subshell exits IFS will return to whatever it was originally. – dubiousjim
May 31 '12 at 5:21
I just want to have a quick look at the paths to decide where to throw an executable, so I
resorted to run ruby -e "puts ENV.fetch('PATH').split(':')" . If you want to
stay pure bash won't help but using any scripting language that has a built-in split
is easier. – nicooga
Mar 7 '16 at 15:32
This is kind of a drive-by comment, but since the OP used email addresses as the example, has
anyone bothered to answer it in a way that is fully RFC 5322 compliant, namely that any
quoted string can appear before the @ which means you're going to need regular expressions or
some other kind of parser instead of naive use of IFS or other simplistic splitter functions.
– Jeff
Apr 22 at 17:51
You can set the internal field separator (IFS)
variable, and then let it parse into an array. When this happens in a command, then the
assignment to IFS only takes place to that single command's environment (to
read ). It then parses the input according to the IFS variable
value into an array, which we can then iterate over.
IFS=';' read -ra ADDR <<< "$IN"
for i in "${ADDR[@]}"; do
# process "$i"
done
It will parse one line of items separated by ; , pushing it into an array.
Stuff for processing whole of $IN , each time one line of input separated by
; :
while IFS=';' read -ra ADDR; do
for i in "${ADDR[@]}"; do
# process "$i"
done
done <<< "$IN"
This is probably the best way. How long will IFS persist in it's current value, can it mess
up my code by being set when it shouldn't be, and how can I reset it when I'm done with it?
– Chris
Lutz
May 28 '09 at 2:25
You can read everything at once without using a while loop: read -r -d '' -a addr
<<< "$in" # The -d '' is key here, it tells read not to stop at the first newline
(which is the default -d) but to continue until EOF or a NULL byte (which only occur in
binary data). – lhunath
May 28 '09 at 6:14
@LucaBorrione Setting IFS on the same line as the read with no
semicolon or other separator, as opposed to in a separate command, scopes it to that command
-- so it's always "restored"; you don't need to do anything manually. – Charles Duffy
Jul 6 '13 at 14:39
@imagineerThis There is a bug involving herestrings and local changes to IFS that requires
$IN to be quoted. The bug is fixed in bash 4.3. – chepner
Oct 2 '14 at 3:50
This construction replaces all occurrences of ';' (the initial
// means global replace) in the string IN with ' ' (a
single space), then interprets the space-delimited string as an array (that's what the
surrounding parentheses do).
The syntax used inside of the curly braces to replace each ';' character with
a ' ' character is called Parameter
Expansion .
There are some common gotchas:
If the original string has spaces, you will need to use
IFS :
IFS=':'; arrIN=($IN); unset IFS;
If the original string has spaces and the delimiter is a new line, you can set
IFS with:
I just want to add: this is the simplest of all, you can access array elements with
${arrIN[1]} (starting from zeros of course) – Oz123
Mar 21 '11 at 18:50
No, I don't think this works when there are also spaces present... it's converting the ',' to
' ' and then building a space-separated array. – Ethan
Apr 12 '13 at 22:47
This is a bad approach for other reasons: For instance, if your string contains
;*; , then the * will be expanded to a list of filenames in the
current directory. -1 – Charles Duffy
Jul 6 '13 at 14:39
You should have kept the IFS answer. It taught me something I didn't know, and it definitely
made an array, whereas this just makes a cheap substitute. – Chris Lutz
May 28 '09 at 2:42
I see. Yeah i find doing these silly experiments, i'm going to learn new things each time i'm
trying to answer things. I've edited stuff based on #bash IRC feedback and undeleted :)
– Johannes Schaub - litb
May 28 '09 at 2:59
-1, you're obviously not aware of wordsplitting, because it's introducing two bugs in your
code. one is when you don't quote $IN and the other is when you pretend a newline is the only
delimiter used in wordsplitting. You are iterating over every WORD in IN, not every line, and
DEFINATELY not every element delimited by a semicolon, though it may appear to have the
side-effect of looking like it works. – lhunath
May 28 '09 at 6:12
You could change it to echo "$IN" | tr ';' '\n' | while read -r ADDY; do # process "$ADDY";
done to make him lucky, i think :) Note that this will fork, and you can't change outer
variables from within the loop (that's why i used the <<< "$IN" syntax) then –
Johannes
Schaub - litb
May 28 '09 at 17:00
To summarize the debate in the comments: Caveats for general use : the shell applies
word splitting and expansions to the string, which may be undesired; just try
it with. IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com;*;broken apart" . In short: this
approach will break, if your tokens contain embedded spaces and/or chars. such as
* that happen to make a token match filenames in the current folder. –
mklement0
Apr 24 '13 at 14:13
To this SO question, there is already a lot of different way to do this in bash . But bash has many
special features, so called bashism that work well, but that won't work in
any other shell .
In particular, arrays , associative array , and pattern
substitution are pure bashisms and may not work under other shells
.
On my Debian GNU/Linux , there is a standard shell called dash , but I know many
people who like to use ksh .
Finally, in very small situation, there is a special tool called busybox with his own shell
interpreter ( ash ).
Requested string
The string sample in SO question is:
IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com"
As this could be useful with whitespaces and as whitespaces could modify
the result of the routine, I prefer to use this sample string:
IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com;Full Name <fulnam@other.org>"
Split string based on delimiter in bash (version >=4.2)
Under pure bash, we may use arrays and IFS :
var="bla@some.com;john@home.com;Full Name <fulnam@other.org>"
oIFS="$IFS"
IFS=";"
declare -a fields=($var)
IFS="$oIFS"
unset oIFS
IFS=\; read -a fields <<<"$var"
Using this syntax under recent bash don't change $IFS for current session,
but only for the current command:
set | grep ^IFS=
IFS=$' \t\n'
Now the string var is split and stored into an array (named
fields ):
set | grep ^fields=\\\|^var=
fields=([0]="bla@some.com" [1]="john@home.com" [2]="Full Name <fulnam@other.org>")
var='bla@some.com;john@home.com;Full Name <fulnam@other.org>'
We could request for variable content with declare -p :
declare -p var fields
declare -- var="bla@some.com;john@home.com;Full Name <fulnam@other.org>"
declare -a fields=([0]="bla@some.com" [1]="john@home.com" [2]="Full Name <fulnam@other.org>")
read is the quickiest way to do the split, because there is no
forks and no external resources called.
From there, you could use the syntax you already know for processing each field:
for x in "${fields[@]}";do
echo "> [$x]"
done
> [bla@some.com]
> [john@home.com]
> [Full Name <fulnam@other.org>]
or drop each field after processing (I like this shifting approach):
while [ "$fields" ] ;do
echo "> [$fields]"
fields=("${fields[@]:1}")
done
> [bla@some.com]
> [john@home.com]
> [Full Name <fulnam@other.org>]
But if you would write something usable under many shells, you have to not use
bashisms .
There is a syntax, used in many shells, for splitting a string across first or
last occurrence of a substring:
${var#*SubStr} # will drop begin of string up to first occur of `SubStr`
${var##*SubStr} # will drop begin of string up to last occur of `SubStr`
${var%SubStr*} # will drop part of string from last occur of `SubStr` to the end
${var%%SubStr*} # will drop part of string from first occur of `SubStr` to the end
(The missing of this is the main reason of my answer publication ;)
The # , ## , % , and %% substitutions
have what is IMO an easier explanation to remember (for how much they delete): #
and % delete the shortest possible matching string, and ## and
%% delete the longest possible. – Score_Under
Apr 28 '15 at 16:58
The IFS=\; read -a fields <<<"$var" fails on newlines and add a
trailing newline. The other solution removes a trailing empty field. – sorontar
Oct 26 '16 at 4:36
Could the last alternative be used with a list of field separators set somewhere else? For
instance, I mean to use this as a shell script, and pass a list of field separators as a
positional parameter. – sancho.s
Oct 4 at 3:42
I've seen a couple of answers referencing the cut command, but they've all been
deleted. It's a little odd that nobody has elaborated on that, because I think it's one of
the more useful commands for doing this type of thing, especially for parsing delimited log
files.
In the case of splitting this specific example into a bash script array, tr
is probably more efficient, but cut can be used, and is more effective if you
want to pull specific fields from the middle.
This approach will only work if you know the number of elements in advance; you'd need to
program some more logic around it. It also runs an external tool for every element. –
uli42
Sep 14 '17 at 8:30
Excatly waht i was looking for trying to avoid empty string in a csv. Now i can point the
exact 'column' value as well. Work with IFS already used in a loop. Better than expected for
my situation. – Louis Loudog Trottier
May 10 at 4:20
, May 28, 2009 at 10:31
How about this approach:
IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com"
set -- "$IN"
IFS=";"; declare -a Array=($*)
echo "${Array[@]}"
echo "${Array[0]}"
echo "${Array[1]}"
+1 Only a side note: shouldn't it be recommendable to keep the old IFS and then restore it?
(as shown by stefanB in his edit3) people landing here (sometimes just copying and pasting a
solution) might not think about this – Luca Borrione
Sep 3 '12 at 9:26
-1: First, @ata is right that most of the commands in this do nothing. Second, it uses
word-splitting to form the array, and doesn't do anything to inhibit glob-expansion when
doing so (so if you have glob characters in any of the array elements, those elements are
replaced with matching filenames). – Charles Duffy
Jul 6 '13 at 14:44
Suggest to use $'...' : IN=$'bla@some.com;john@home.com;bet <d@\ns*
kl.com>' . Then echo "${Array[2]}" will print a string with newline.
set -- "$IN" is also neccessary in this case. Yes, to prevent glob expansion,
the solution should include set -f . – John_West
Jan 8 '16 at 12:29
-1 what if the string contains spaces? for example IN="this is first line; this
is second line" arrIN=( $( echo "$IN" | sed -e 's/;/\n/g' ) ) will produce an array of
8 elements in this case (an element for each word space separated), rather than 2 (an element
for each line semi colon separated) – Luca Borrione
Sep 3 '12 at 10:08
@Luca No the sed script creates exactly two lines. What creates the multiple entries for you
is when you put it into a bash array (which splits on white space by default) –
lothar
Sep 3 '12 at 17:33
That's exactly the point: the OP needs to store entries into an array to loop over it, as you
can see in his edits. I think your (good) answer missed to mention to use arrIN=( $(
echo "$IN" | sed -e 's/;/\n/g' ) ) to achieve that, and to advice to change IFS to
IFS=$'\n' for those who land here in the future and needs to split a string
containing spaces. (and to restore it back afterwards). :) – Luca Borrione
Sep 4 '12 at 7:09
You can use -s to avoid the mentioned problem: superuser.com/questions/896800/
"-f, --fields=LIST select only these fields; also print any line that contains no delimiter
character, unless the -s option is specified" – fersarr
Mar 3 '16 at 17:17
It worked in this scenario -> "echo "$SPLIT_0" | awk -F' inode=' '{print $1}'"! I had
problems when trying to use atrings (" inode=") instead of characters (";"). $ 1, $ 2, $ 3, $
4 are set as positions in an array! If there is a way of setting an array... better! Thanks!
– Eduardo Lucio
Aug 5 '15 at 12:59
@EduardoLucio, what I'm thinking about is maybe you can first replace your delimiter
inode= into ; for example by sed -i 's/inode\=/\;/g'
your_file_to_process , then define -F';' when apply awk ,
hope that can help you. – Tony
Aug 6 '15 at 2:42
I think it does! Run the commands above and then "echo $ADDR1 ... $ADDR2" and i get
"bla@some.com ... john@home.com" output – nickjb
Oct 6 '11 at 15:33
This worked REALLY well for me... I used it to itterate over an array of strings which
contained comma separated DB,SERVER,PORT data to use mysqldump. – Nick
Oct 28 '11 at 14:36
Diagnosis: the IFS=";" assignment exists only in the $(...; echo
$IN) subshell; this is why some readers (including me) initially think it won't work.
I assumed that all of $IN was getting slurped up by ADDR1. But nickjb is correct; it does
work. The reason is that echo $IN command parses its arguments using the current
value of $IFS, but then echoes them to stdout using a space delimiter, regardless of the
setting of $IFS. So the net effect is as though one had called read ADDR1 ADDR2
<<< "bla@some.com john@home.com" (note the input is space-separated not
;-separated). – dubiousjim
May 31 '12 at 5:28
$ in=$'one;two three;*;there is\na newline\nin this field'
$ IFS=';' read -d '' -ra array < <(printf '%s;\0' "$in")
$ declare -p array
declare -a array='([0]="one" [1]="two three" [2]="*" [3]="there is
a newline
in this field")'
The trick for this to work is to use the -d option of read
(delimiter) with an empty delimiter, so that read is forced to read everything
it's fed. And we feed read with exactly the content of the variable
in , with no trailing newline thanks to printf . Note that's we're
also putting the delimiter in printf to ensure that the string passed to
read has a trailing delimiter. Without it, read would trim
potential trailing empty fields:
$ in='one;two;three;' # there's an empty field
$ IFS=';' read -d '' -ra array < <(printf '%s;\0' "$in")
$ declare -p array
declare -a array='([0]="one" [1]="two" [2]="three" [3]="")'
the trailing empty field is preserved.
Update for Bash≥4.4
Since Bash 4.4, the builtin mapfile (aka readarray ) supports
the -d option to specify a delimiter. Hence another canonical way is:
I found it as the rare solution on that list that works correctly with \n ,
spaces and * simultaneously. Also, no loops; array variable is accessible in the
shell after execution (contrary to the highest upvoted answer). Note, in=$'...'
, it does not work with double quotes. I think, it needs more upvotes. – John_West
Jan 8 '16 at 12:10
Consider using read -r ... to ensure that, for example, the two characters "\t"
in the input end up as the same two characters in your variables (instead of a single tab
char). – dubiousjim
May 31 '12 at 5:36
-1 This is not working here (ubuntu 12.04). Adding echo "ADDR1 $ADDR1"\n echo "ADDR2
$ADDR2" to your snippet will output ADDR1 bla@some.com
john@home.com\nADDR2 (\n is newline) – Luca Borrione
Sep 3 '12 at 10:07
This is probably due to a bug involving IFS and here strings that was fixed in
bash 4.3. Quoting $IN should fix it. (In theory, $IN
is not subject to word splitting or globbing after it expands, meaning the quotes should be
unnecessary. Even in 4.3, though, there's at least one bug remaining--reported and scheduled
to be fixed--so quoting remains a good idea.) – chepner
Sep 19 '15 at 13:59
The following Bash/zsh function splits its first argument on the delimiter given by the
second argument:
split() {
local string="$1"
local delimiter="$2"
if [ -n "$string" ]; then
local part
while read -d "$delimiter" part; do
echo $part
done <<< "$string"
echo $part
fi
}
For instance, the command
$ split 'a;b;c' ';'
yields
a
b
c
This output may, for instance, be piped to other commands. Example:
$ split 'a;b;c' ';' | cat -n
1 a
2 b
3 c
Compared to the other solutions given, this one has the following advantages:
IFS is not overriden: Due to dynamic scoping of even local variables,
overriding IFS over a loop causes the new value to leak into function calls
performed from within the loop.
Arrays are not used: Reading a string into an array using read requires
the flag -a in Bash and -A in zsh.
If desired, the function may be put into a script as follows:
There are some cool answers here (errator esp.), but for something analogous to split in
other languages -- which is what I took the original question to mean -- I settled on this:
IN="bla@some.com;john@home.com"
declare -a a="(${IN/;/ })";
Now ${a[0]} , ${a[1]} , etc, are as you would expect. Use
${#a[*]} for number of terms. Or to iterate, of course:
for i in ${a[*]}; do echo $i; done
IMPORTANT NOTE:
This works in cases where there are no spaces to worry about, which solved my problem, but
may not solve yours. Go with the $IFS solution(s) in that case.
Better use ${IN//;/ } (double slash) to make it also work with more than two
values. Beware that any wildcard ( *?[ ) will be expanded. And a trailing empty
field will be discarded. – sorontar
Oct 26 '16 at 5:14
Better use set -- $IN to avoid some issues with "$IN" starting with dash. Still,
the unquoted expansion of $IN will expand wildcards ( *?[ ).
– sorontar
Oct 26 '16 at 5:17
In both cases a sub-list can be composed within the loop is persistent after the loop has
completed. This is useful when manipulating lists in memory, instead storing lists in files.
{p.s. keep calm and carry on B-) }
Fails if any part of $PATH contains spaces (or newlines). Also expands wildcards (asterisk *,
question mark ? and braces [ ]). – sorontar
Oct 26 '16 at 5:08
FYI, /etc/os-release and /etc/lsb-release are meant to be sourced,
and not parsed. So your method is really wrong. Moreover, you're not quite answering the
question about spiltting a string on a delimiter. – gniourf_gniourf
Jan 30 '17 at 8:26
-1 this doesn't work here (ubuntu 12.04). it prints only the first echo with all $IN value in
it, while the second is empty. you can see it if you put echo "0: "${ADDRS[0]}\n echo "1:
"${ADDRS[1]} the output is 0: bla@some.com;john@home.com\n 1: (\n is new line)
– Luca
Borrione
Sep 3 '12 at 10:04
-1, 1. IFS isn't being set in that subshell (it's being passed to the environment of "echo",
which is a builtin, so nothing is happening anyway). 2. $IN is quoted so it
isn't subject to IFS splitting. 3. The process substitution is split by whitespace, but this
may corrupt the original data. – Score_Under
Apr 28 '15 at 17:09
IN='bla@some.com;john@home.com;Charlie Brown <cbrown@acme.com;!"#$%&/()[]{}*? are no problem;simple is beautiful :-)'
set -f
oldifs="$IFS"
IFS=';'; arrayIN=($IN)
IFS="$oldifs"
for i in "${arrayIN[@]}"; do
echo "$i"
done
set +f
Output:
bla@some.com
john@home.com
Charlie Brown <cbrown@acme.com
!"#$%&/()[]{}*? are no problem
simple is beautiful :-)
Explanation: Simple assignment using parenthesis () converts semicolon separated list into
an array provided you have correct IFS while doing that. Standard FOR loop handles individual
items in that array as usual. Notice that the list given for IN variable must be "hard"
quoted, that is, with single ticks.
IFS must be saved and restored since Bash does not treat an assignment the same way as a
command. An alternate workaround is to wrap the assignment inside a function and call that
function with a modified IFS. In that case separate saving/restoring of IFS is not needed.
Thanks for "Bize" for pointing that out.
!"#$%&/()[]{}*? are no problem well... not quite: []*? are glob
characters. So what about creating this directory and file: `mkdir '!"#$%&'; touch
'!"#$%&/()[]{} got you hahahaha - are no problem' and running your command? simple may be
beautiful, but when it's broken, it's broken. – gniourf_gniourf
Feb 20 '15 at 16:45
@ajaaskel you didn't fully understand my comment. Go in a scratch directory and issue these
commands: mkdir '!"#$%&'; touch '!"#$%&/()[]{} got you hahahaha - are no
problem' . They will only create a directory and a file, with weird looking names, I
must admit. Then run your commands with the exact IN you gave:
IN='bla@some.com;john@home.com;Charlie Brown <cbrown@acme.com;!"#$%&/()[]{}*?
are no problem;simple is beautiful :-)' . You'll see that you won't get the output you
expect. Because you're using a method subject to pathname expansions to split your string.
– gniourf_gniourf
Feb 25 '15 at 7:26
This is to demonstrate that the characters * , ? ,
[...] and even, if extglob is set, !(...) ,
@(...) , ?(...) , +(...)are problems with this
method! – gniourf_gniourf
Feb 25 '15 at 7:29
@gniourf_gniourf Thanks for detailed comments on globbing. I adjusted the code to have
globbing off. My point was however just to show that rather simple assignment can do the
splitting job. – ajaaskel
Feb 26 '15 at 15:26
> , Dec 19, 2013 at 21:39
Maybe not the most elegant solution, but works with * and spaces:
IN="bla@so me.com;*;john@home.com"
for i in `delims=${IN//[^;]}; seq 1 $((${#delims} + 1))`
do
echo "> [`echo $IN | cut -d';' -f$i`]"
done
Basically it removes every character other than ; making delims
eg. ;;; . Then it does for loop from 1 to
number-of-delimiters as counted by ${#delims} . The final step is
to safely get the $i th part using cut .
Create indexed arrays on the fly We can create indexed arrays with a more concise
syntax, by simply assign them some values:
$ my_array=(foo bar)
In this case we assigned multiple items at once to the array, but we can also insert one
value at a time, specifying its index:
$ my_array[0]=foo
Array operations Once an array is created, we can perform some useful operations on
it, like displaying its keys and values or modifying it by appending or removing elements: Print
the values of an array To display all the values of an array we can use the following shell
expansion syntax:
${my_array[@]}
Or even:
${my_array[*]}
Both syntax let us access all the values of the array and produce the same results, unless
the expansion it's quoted. In this case a difference arises: in the first case, when using
@ , the expansion will result in a word for each element of the array. This becomes
immediately clear when performing a for loop . As an example, imagine we have an
array with two elements, "foo" and "bar":
$ my_array=(foo bar)
Performing a for loop on it will produce the following result:
$ for i in "${my_array[@]}"; do echo "$i"; done
foo
bar
When using * , and the variable is quoted, instead, a single "result" will be
produced, containing all the elements of the array:
$ for i in "${my_array[*]}"; do echo "$i"; done
foo bar
Print the keys of an array It's even possible to retrieve and print the keys used in an
indexed or associative array, instead of their respective values. The syntax is almost
identical, but relies on the use of the ! operator:
$ my_array=(foo bar baz)
$ for index in "${!my_array[@]}"; do echo "$index"; done
0
1
2
The same is valid for associative arrays:
$ declare -A my_array
$ my_array=([foo]=bar [baz]=foobar)
$ for key in "${!my_array[@]}"; do echo "$key"; done
baz
foo
As you can see, being the latter an associative array, we can't count on the fact that
retrieved values are returned in the same order in which they were declared. Getting the size of
an array We can retrieve the size of an array (the number of elements contained in it), by
using a specific shell expansion:
$ my_array=(foo bar baz)
$ echo "the array contains ${#my_array[@]} elements"
the array contains 3 elements
We have created an array which contains three elements, "foo", "bar" and "baz", then by using
the syntax above, which differs from the one we saw before to retrieve the array values only for
the # character before the array name, we retrieved the number of the elements in the
array instead of its content. Adding elements to an array As we saw, we can add elements to
an indexed or associative array by specifying respectively their index or associative key. In the
case of indexed arrays, we can also simply add an element, by appending to the end of the array,
using the += operator:
$ my_array=(foo bar)
$ my_array+=(baz)
If we now print the content of the array we see that the element has been added successfully:
Deleting an element from the array To delete an element from the array we need to know
it's index or its key in the case of an associative array, and use the unset
command. Let's see an example:
We have created a simple array containing three elements, "foo", "bar" and "baz", then we
deleted "bar" from it running unset and referencing the index of "bar" in the array:
in this case we know it was 1 , since bash arrays start at 0. If we check the indexes
of the array, we can now see that 1 is missing:
In the example above, the value referenced by the "foo" key has been deleted, leaving only
"foobar" in the array.
Deleting an entire array, it's even simpler: we just pass the array name as an argument to
the unset command without specifying any index or key:
$ unset my_array
$ echo ${!my_array[@]}
After executing unset against the entire array, when trying to print its content
an empty result is returned: the array doesn't exist anymore. Conclusions In this tutorial
we saw the difference between indexed and associative arrays in bash, how to initialize them and
how to perform fundamental operations, like displaying their keys and values and appending or
removing items. Finally we saw how to unset them completely. Bash syntax can sometimes be pretty
weird, but using arrays in scripts can be really useful. When a script starts to become more
complex than expected, my advice is, however, to switch to a more capable scripting language such
as python.
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bobbydavid
Sep 19, 2012
One annoyance with this alias is that simply typing "cd" will twiddle the
directory stack instead of bringing you to your home directory.
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bobbydavid
commented
Sep 19, 2012
One annoyance with
this alias is that simply typing "cd" will twiddle the directory stack instead of
bringing you to your home directory.
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dideler
Mar 9, 2013
@bobbydavid
makes a good point. This would be better as a function.
function cd {
if (("$#" > 0)); then
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
else
cd $HOME
fi
}
By the way, I found this gist by googling "silence pushd".
function cd {
if (("$#" > 0)); then
if [ "$1" == "-" ]; then
popd > /dev/null
else
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
fi
else
cd $HOME
fi
}
You can always mimic the "cd -" functionality by using pushd alone.
Btw, I also found this gist by googling "silent pushd" ;)
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cra
Jul 1, 2014
And thanks to your last comment, I found this gist by googling "silent cd -" :)
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cra
commented
Jul 1, 2014
And thanks to your
last comment, I found this gist by googling "silent cd -" :)
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keltroth
Jun 25, 2015
With bash completion activated a can't get rid of this error :
"bash: pushd: cd: No such file or directory"...
With bash completion
activated a can't get rid of this error :
"bash: pushd: cd: No such file or directory"...
Any clue ?
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keltroth
Jun 25, 2015
Got it !
One have to add :
complete -d cd
After making the alias !
My complete code here :
function _cd {
if (("$#" > 0)); then
if [ "$1" == "-" ]; then
popd > /dev/null
else
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
fi
else
cd $HOME
fi
}
alias cd=_cd
complete -d cd
function _cd {
if (("$#" > 0)); then
if [ "$1" == "-" ]; then
popd > /dev/null
else
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
fi
else
cd $HOME
fi
}
alias cd=_cd
complete -d cd
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jan-warchol
Nov 29, 2015
I wanted to be able to go back by a given number of history items by typing
cd -n
, and I came up with this:
function _cd {
# typing just `_cd` will take you $HOME ;)
if [ "$1" == "" ]; then
pushd "$HOME" > /dev/null
# use `_cd -` to visit previous directory
elif [ "$1" == "-" ]; then
pushd $OLDPWD > /dev/null
# use `_cd -n` to go n directories back in history
elif [[ "$1" =~ ^-[0-9]+$ ]]; then
for i in `seq 1 ${1/-/}`; do
popd > /dev/null
done
# use `_cd -- <path>` if your path begins with a dash
elif [ "$1" == "--" ]; then
shift
pushd -- "$@" > /dev/null
# basic case: move to a dir and add it to history
else
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
fi
}
# replace standard `cd` with enhanced version, ensure tab-completion works
alias cd=_cd
complete -d cd
I wanted to be able
to go back by a given number of history items by typing
cd -n
, and I
came up with this:
function _cd {
# typing just `_cd` will take you $HOME ;)
if [ "$1" == "" ]; then
pushd "$HOME" > /dev/null
# use `_cd -` to visit previous directory
elif [ "$1" == "-" ]; then
pushd $OLDPWD > /dev/null
# use `_cd -n` to go n directories back in history
elif [[ "$1" =~ ^-[0-9]+$ ]]; then
for i in `seq 1 ${1/-/}`; do
popd > /dev/null
done
# use `_cd -- <path>` if your path begins with a dash
elif [ "$1" == "--" ]; then
shift
pushd -- "$@" > /dev/null
# basic case: move to a dir and add it to history
else
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
fi
}
# replace standard `cd` with enhanced version, ensure tab-completion works
alias cd=_cd
complete -d cd
I think you may find this interesting.
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3v1n0
Oct 25, 2017
Another improvement over
@jan-warchol
version, to make
cd -
to alternatively use
pushd $OLDPWD
and
popd
depending on what we called before.
This allows to avoid to fill your history with elements when you often do
cd -; cd - # repeated as long you want
. This could be applied when using
this alias also for
$OLDPWD
, but in that case it might be that you
want it repeated there, so I didn't touch it.
Also added
cd -l
as alias for
dir -v
and use
cd -g X
to go to the
X
th directory in your history (without
popping, that's possible too of course, but it' something more an addition in
this case).
# Replace cd with pushd https://gist.github.com/mbadran/130469
function push_cd() {
# typing just `push_cd` will take you $HOME ;)
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
push_cd "$HOME"
# use `push_cd -` to visit previous directory
elif [ "$1" == "-" ]; then
if [ "$(dirs -p | wc -l)" -gt 1 ]; then
current_dir="$PWD"
popd > /dev/null
pushd -n $current_dir > /dev/null
elif [ -n "$OLDPWD" ]; then
push_cd $OLDPWD
fi
# use `push_cd -l` or `push_cd -s` to print current stack of folders
elif [ "$1" == "-l" ] || [ "$1" == "-s" ]; then
dirs -v
# use `push_cd -l N` to go to the Nth directory in history (pushing)
elif [ "$1" == "-g" ] && [[ "$2" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
indexed_path=$(dirs -p | sed -n $(($2+1))p)
push_cd $indexed_path
# use `push_cd +N` to go to the Nth directory in history (pushing)
elif [[ "$1" =~ ^+[0-9]+$ ]]; then
push_cd -g ${1/+/}
# use `push_cd -N` to go n directories back in history
elif [[ "$1" =~ ^-[0-9]+$ ]]; then
for i in `seq 1 ${1/-/}`; do
popd > /dev/null
done
# use `push_cd -- <path>` if your path begins with a dash
elif [ "$1" == "--" ]; then
shift
pushd -- "$@" > /dev/null
# basic case: move to a dir and add it to history
else
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
if [ "$1" == "." ] || [ "$1" == "$PWD" ]; then
popd -n > /dev/null
fi
fi
if [ -n "$CD_SHOW_STACK" ]; then
dirs -v
fi
}
# replace standard `cd` with enhanced version, ensure tab-completion works
alias cd=push_cd
complete -d cd```
Another improvement
over
@jan-warchol
version, to make
cd -
to alternatively use
pushd
$OLDPWD
and
popd
depending on what we called before.
This
allows to avoid to fill your history with elements when you often do
cd -; cd
- # repeated as long you want
. This could be applied when using this alias
also for
$OLDPWD
, but in that case it might be that you want it
repeated there, so I didn't touch it.
Also added
cd -l
as alias for
dir -v
and use
cd
-g X
to go to the
X
th directory in your history (without
popping, that's possible too of course, but it' something more an addition in this
case).
# Replace cd with pushd https://gist.github.com/mbadran/130469
function push_cd() {
# typing just `push_cd` will take you $HOME ;)
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
push_cd "$HOME"
# use `push_cd -` to visit previous directory
elif [ "$1" == "-" ]; then
if [ "$(dirs -p | wc -l)" -gt 1 ]; then
current_dir="$PWD"
popd > /dev/null
pushd -n $current_dir > /dev/null
elif [ -n "$OLDPWD" ]; then
push_cd $OLDPWD
fi
# use `push_cd -l` or `push_cd -s` to print current stack of folders
elif [ "$1" == "-l" ] || [ "$1" == "-s" ]; then
dirs -v
# use `push_cd -l N` to go to the Nth directory in history (pushing)
elif [ "$1" == "-g" ] && [[ "$2" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
indexed_path=$(dirs -p | sed -n $(($2+1))p)
push_cd $indexed_path
# use `push_cd +N` to go to the Nth directory in history (pushing)
elif [[ "$1" =~ ^+[0-9]+$ ]]; then
push_cd -g ${1/+/}
# use `push_cd -N` to go n directories back in history
elif [[ "$1" =~ ^-[0-9]+$ ]]; then
for i in `seq 1 ${1/-/}`; do
popd > /dev/null
done
# use `push_cd -- <path>` if your path begins with a dash
elif [ "$1" == "--" ]; then
shift
pushd -- "$@" > /dev/null
# basic case: move to a dir and add it to history
else
pushd "$@" > /dev/null
if [ "$1" == "." ] || [ "$1" == "$PWD" ]; then
popd -n > /dev/null
fi
fi
if [ -n "$CD_SHOW_STACK" ]; then
dirs -v
fi
}
# replace standard `cd` with enhanced version, ensure tab-completion works
alias cd=push_cd
complete -d cd```
izaak says:
March 12, 2010
at 11:06 am I would also add $ echo 'export HISTSIZE=10000' >> ~/.bash_profile
It's really useful, I think.
Dariusz says:
March 12, 2010
at 2:31 pm you can add it to /etc/profile so it is available to all users. I also add:
# Make sure all terminals save history
shopt -s histappend histreedit histverify
shopt -s no_empty_cmd_completion # bash>=2.04 only
# Whenever displaying the prompt, write the previous line to disk:
PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'
#Use GREP color features by default: This will highlight the matched words / regexes
export GREP_OPTIONS='–color=auto'
export GREP_COLOR='1;37;41′
Babar Haq says:
March 15, 2010
at 6:25 am Good tip. We have multiple users connecting as root using ssh and running different commands. Is there a way to
log the IP that command was run from?
Thanks in advance.
Anthony says:
August 21,
2014 at 9:01 pm Just for anyone who might still find this thread (like I did today):
will give you the time format, plus the IP address culled from the ssh_connection environment variable (thanks for pointing
that out, Cadrian, I never knew about that before), all right there in your history output.
You could even add in $(whoami)@ right to get if you like (although if everyone's logging in with the root account that's
not helpful).
set |grep -i hist
HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
HISTFILE=/home/cadrian/.bash_history
HISTFILESIZE=1000000000
HISTSIZE=10000000
So in profile you can so something like HISTFILE=/root/.bash_history_$(echo $SSH_CONNECTION| cut -d\ -f1)
TSI says:
March 21, 2010
at 10:29 am bash 4 can syslog every command bat afaik, you have to recompile it (check file config-top.h). See the news file
of bash: http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/bash/NEWS
If you want to safely export history of your luser, you can ssl-syslog them to a central syslog server.
Sohail says:
January 13, 2012
at 7:05 am Hi
Nice trick but unfortunately, the commands which were executed in the past few days also are carrying the current day's (today's)
timestamp.
Yes indeed that will be the behavior of the system since you have just enabled on that day the HISTTIMEFORMAT feature. In
other words, the system recall or record the commands which were inputted prior enabling of this feature. Hope this answers
your concern.
Yes, that will be the behavior of the system since you have just enabled on that day the HISTTIMEFORMAT feature. In other
words, the system can't recall or record the commands which were inputted prior enabling of this feature, thus it will just
reflect on the printed output (upon execution of "history") the current day and time. Hope this answers your concern.
The command only lists the current date (Today) even for those commands which were executed on earlier days.
Any solutions ?
Regards
nitiratna nikalje says:
August 24, 2012
at 5:24 pm hi vivek.do u know any openings for freshers in linux field? I m doing rhce course from rajiv banergy. My samba,nfs-nis,dhcp,telnet,ftp,http,ssh,squid,cron,quota
and system administration is over.iptables ,sendmail and dns is remaining.
Krishan says:
February 7,
2014 at 6:18 am The command is not working properly. It is displaying the date and time of todays for all the commands where
as I ran the some command three before.
I want to collect the history of particular user everyday and want to send an email.I wrote below script.
for collecting everyday history by time shall i edit .profile file of that user echo 'export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T "' >> ~/.bash_profile
Script:
#!/bin/bash
#This script sends email of particular user
history >/tmp/history
if [ -s /tmp/history ]
then
mailx -s "history 29042014" </tmp/history
fi
rm /tmp/history
#END OF THE SCRIPT
Can any one suggest better way to collect particular user history for everyday
What's the accepted way of parsing this such that in each case (or some combination of the
two) $v , $f , and $d will all be set to
true and $outFile will be equal to /fizz/someOtherFile
?
For zsh-users there's a great builtin called zparseopts which can do: zparseopts -D -E
-M -- d=debug -debug=d And have both -d and --debug in the
$debug array echo $+debug[1] will return 0 or 1 if one of those are
used. Ref: zsh.org/mla/users/2011/msg00350.html
– dezza
Aug 2 '16 at 2:13
Preferred Method: Using straight bash without getopt[s]
I originally answered the question as the OP asked. This Q/A is getting a lot of
attention, so I should also offer the non-magic way to do this. I'm going to expand upon
guneysus's answer
to fix the nasty sed and include
Tobias Kienzler's suggestion .
Two of the most common ways to pass key value pair arguments are:
#!/bin/bash
POSITIONAL=()
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]
do
key="$1"
case $key in
-e|--extension)
EXTENSION="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
-s|--searchpath)
SEARCHPATH="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
-l|--lib)
LIBPATH="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
--default)
DEFAULT=YES
shift # past argument
;;
*) # unknown option
POSITIONAL+=("$1") # save it in an array for later
shift # past argument
;;
esac
done
set -- "${POSITIONAL[@]}" # restore positional parameters
echo FILE EXTENSION = "${EXTENSION}"
echo SEARCH PATH = "${SEARCHPATH}"
echo LIBRARY PATH = "${LIBPATH}"
echo DEFAULT = "${DEFAULT}"
echo "Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION:" $(ls -1 "${SEARCHPATH}"/*."${EXTENSION}" | wc -l)
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
echo "Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:"
tail -1 "$1"
fi
#!/bin/bash
for i in "$@"
do
case $i in
-e=*|--extension=*)
EXTENSION="${i#*=}"
shift # past argument=value
;;
-s=*|--searchpath=*)
SEARCHPATH="${i#*=}"
shift # past argument=value
;;
-l=*|--lib=*)
LIBPATH="${i#*=}"
shift # past argument=value
;;
--default)
DEFAULT=YES
shift # past argument with no value
;;
*)
# unknown option
;;
esac
done
echo "FILE EXTENSION = ${EXTENSION}"
echo "SEARCH PATH = ${SEARCHPATH}"
echo "LIBRARY PATH = ${LIBPATH}"
echo "Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION:" $(ls -1 "${SEARCHPATH}"/*."${EXTENSION}" | wc -l)
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
echo "Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:"
tail -1 $1
fi
To better understand ${i#*=} search for "Substring Removal" in this guide . It is
functionally equivalent to `sed 's/[^=]*=//' <<< "$i"` which calls a
needless subprocess or `echo "$i" | sed 's/[^=]*=//'` which calls two
needless subprocesses.
Never use getopt(1). getopt cannot handle empty arguments strings, or
arguments with embedded whitespace. Please forget that it ever existed.
The POSIX shell (and others) offer getopts which is safe to use instead. Here
is a simplistic getopts example:
#!/bin/sh
# A POSIX variable
OPTIND=1 # Reset in case getopts has been used previously in the shell.
# Initialize our own variables:
output_file=""
verbose=0
while getopts "h?vf:" opt; do
case "$opt" in
h|\?)
show_help
exit 0
;;
v) verbose=1
;;
f) output_file=$OPTARG
;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND-1))
[ "${1:-}" = "--" ] && shift
echo "verbose=$verbose, output_file='$output_file', Leftovers: $@"
# End of file
The advantages of getopts are:
It's portable, and will work in e.g. dash.
It can handle things like -vf filename in the expected Unix way,
automatically.
The disadvantage of getopts is that it can only handle short options (
-h , not --help ) without trickery.
There is a getopts tutorial which explains
what all of the syntax and variables mean. In bash, there is also help getopts ,
which might be informative.
Is this really true? According to Wikipedia there's a newer GNU enhanced version of
getopt which includes all the functionality of getopts and then
some. man getopt on Ubuntu 13.04 outputs getopt - parse command options
(enhanced) as the name, so I presume this enhanced version is standard now. –
Livven
Jun 6 '13 at 21:19
You do not echo –default . In the first example, I notice that if
–default is the last argument, it is not processed (considered as
non-opt), unless while [[ $# -gt 1 ]] is set as while [[ $# -gt 0
]] – kolydart
Jul 10 '17 at 8:11
No answer mentions enhanced getopt . And the top-voted answer is misleading: It ignores
-vfd style short options (requested by the OP), options after positional
arguments (also requested by the OP) and it ignores parsing-errors. Instead:
Use enhanced getopt from util-linux or formerly GNU glibc .
1
It works with getopt_long() the C function of GNU glibc.
Has all useful distinguishing features (the others don't have them):
handles spaces, quoting characters and even binary in arguments
2
it can handle options at the end: script.sh -o outFile file1 file2
-v
allows = -style long options: script.sh --outfile=fileOut
--infile fileIn
Is so old already 3 that no GNU system is missing this (e.g. any
Linux has it).
You can test for its existence with: getopt --test → return value
4.
Other getopt or shell-builtin getopts are of limited
use.
verbose: y, force: y, debug: y, in: ./foo/bar/someFile, out: /fizz/someOtherFile
with the following myscript
#!/bin/bash
getopt --test > /dev/null
if [[ $? -ne 4 ]]; then
echo "I'm sorry, `getopt --test` failed in this environment."
exit 1
fi
OPTIONS=dfo:v
LONGOPTIONS=debug,force,output:,verbose
# -temporarily store output to be able to check for errors
# -e.g. use "--options" parameter by name to activate quoting/enhanced mode
# -pass arguments only via -- "$@" to separate them correctly
PARSED=$(getopt --options=$OPTIONS --longoptions=$LONGOPTIONS --name "$0" -- "$@")
if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
# e.g. $? == 1
# then getopt has complained about wrong arguments to stdout
exit 2
fi
# read getopt's output this way to handle the quoting right:
eval set -- "$PARSED"
# now enjoy the options in order and nicely split until we see --
while true; do
case "$1" in
-d|--debug)
d=y
shift
;;
-f|--force)
f=y
shift
;;
-v|--verbose)
v=y
shift
;;
-o|--output)
outFile="$2"
shift 2
;;
--)
shift
break
;;
*)
echo "Programming error"
exit 3
;;
esac
done
# handle non-option arguments
if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]; then
echo "$0: A single input file is required."
exit 4
fi
echo "verbose: $v, force: $f, debug: $d, in: $1, out: $outFile"
1 enhanced getopt is available on most "bash-systems", including
Cygwin; on OS X try brew install gnu-getopt 2 the POSIX exec() conventions have no reliable way to
pass binary NULL in command line arguments; those bytes prematurely end the argument 3 first version released in 1997 or before (I only tracked it back to
1997)
I believe that the only caveat with getopt is that it cannot be used
conveniently in wrapper scripts where one might have few options specific to the
wrapper script, and then pass the non-wrapper-script options to the wrapped executable,
intact. Let's say I have a grep wrapper called mygrep and I have an
option --foo specific to mygrep , then I cannot do mygrep
--foo -A 2 , and have the -A 2 passed automatically to grep
; I need to do mygrep --foo -- -A 2 . Here is my implementation on top of
your solution. – Kaushal Modi
Apr 27 '17 at 14:02
Alex, I agree and there's really no way around that since we need to know the actual return
value of getopt --test . I'm a big fan of "Unofficial Bash Strict mode", (which
includes set -e ), and I just put the check for getopt ABOVE set -euo
pipefail and IFS=$'\n\t' in my script. – bobpaul
Mar 20 at 16:45
@bobpaul Oh, there is a way around that. And I'll edit my answer soon to reflect my
collections regarding this issue ( set -e )... – Robert Siemer
Mar 21 at 9:10
@bobpaul Your statement about util-linux is wrong and misleading as well: the package is
marked "essential" on Ubuntu/Debian. As such, it is always installed. – Which distros
are you talking about (where you say it needs to be installed on purpose)? – Robert Siemer
Mar 21 at 9:16
#!/bin/bash
for i in "$@"
do
case $i in
-p=*|--prefix=*)
PREFIX="${i#*=}"
;;
-s=*|--searchpath=*)
SEARCHPATH="${i#*=}"
;;
-l=*|--lib=*)
DIR="${i#*=}"
;;
--default)
DEFAULT=YES
;;
*)
# unknown option
;;
esac
done
echo PREFIX = ${PREFIX}
echo SEARCH PATH = ${SEARCHPATH}
echo DIRS = ${DIR}
echo DEFAULT = ${DEFAULT}
To better understand ${i#*=} search for "Substring Removal" in this guide . It is
functionally equivalent to `sed 's/[^=]*=//' <<< "$i"` which calls a
needless subprocess or `echo "$i" | sed 's/[^=]*=//'` which calls two
needless subprocesses.
Neat! Though this won't work for space-separated arguments à la mount -t tempfs
... . One can probably fix this via something like while [ $# -ge 1 ]; do
param=$1; shift; case $param in; -p) prefix=$1; shift;; etc – Tobias Kienzler
Nov 12 '13 at 12:48
@Matt J, the first part of the script (for i) would be able to handle arguments with spaces
in them if you use "$i" instead of $i. The getopts does not seem to be able to handle
arguments with spaces. What would be the advantage of using getopt over the for i loop?
– thebunnyrules
Jun 1 at 1:57
Sorry for the delay. In my script, the handle_argument function receives all the non-option
arguments. You can replace that line with whatever you'd like, maybe *) die
"unrecognized argument: $1" or collect the args into a variable *) args+="$1";
shift 1;; . – bronson
Oct 8 '15 at 20:41
Amazing! I've tested a couple of answers, but this is the only one that worked for all cases,
including many positional parameters (both before and after flags) – Guilherme Garnier
Apr 13 at 16:10
I'm about 4 years late to this question, but want to give back. I used the earlier answers as
a starting point to tidy up my old adhoc param parsing. I then refactored out the following
template code. It handles both long and short params, using = or space separated arguments,
as well as multiple short params grouped together. Finally it re-inserts any non-param
arguments back into the $1,$2.. variables. I hope it's useful.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# NOTICE: Uncomment if your script depends on bashisms.
#if [ -z "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then bash $0 $@ ; exit $? ; fi
echo "Before"
for i ; do echo - $i ; done
# Code template for parsing command line parameters using only portable shell
# code, while handling both long and short params, handling '-f file' and
# '-f=file' style param data and also capturing non-parameters to be inserted
# back into the shell positional parameters.
while [ -n "$1" ]; do
# Copy so we can modify it (can't modify $1)
OPT="$1"
# Detect argument termination
if [ x"$OPT" = x"--" ]; then
shift
for OPT ; do
REMAINS="$REMAINS \"$OPT\""
done
break
fi
# Parse current opt
while [ x"$OPT" != x"-" ] ; do
case "$OPT" in
# Handle --flag=value opts like this
-c=* | --config=* )
CONFIGFILE="${OPT#*=}"
shift
;;
# and --flag value opts like this
-c* | --config )
CONFIGFILE="$2"
shift
;;
-f* | --force )
FORCE=true
;;
-r* | --retry )
RETRY=true
;;
# Anything unknown is recorded for later
* )
REMAINS="$REMAINS \"$OPT\""
break
;;
esac
# Check for multiple short options
# NOTICE: be sure to update this pattern to match valid options
NEXTOPT="${OPT#-[cfr]}" # try removing single short opt
if [ x"$OPT" != x"$NEXTOPT" ] ; then
OPT="-$NEXTOPT" # multiple short opts, keep going
else
break # long form, exit inner loop
fi
done
# Done with that param. move to next
shift
done
# Set the non-parameters back into the positional parameters ($1 $2 ..)
eval set -- $REMAINS
echo -e "After: \n configfile='$CONFIGFILE' \n force='$FORCE' \n retry='$RETRY' \n remains='$REMAINS'"
for i ; do echo - $i ; done
This code can't handle options with arguments like this: -c1 . And the use of
= to separate short options from their arguments is unusual... –
Robert
Siemer
Dec 6 '15 at 13:47
I ran into two problems with this useful chunk of code: 1) the "shift" in the case of
"-c=foo" ends up eating the next parameter; and 2) 'c' should not be included in the "[cfr]"
pattern for combinable short options. – sfnd
Jun 6 '16 at 19:28
My answer is largely based on the answer by Bruno Bronosky , but I sort
of mashed his two pure bash implementations into one that I use pretty frequently.
# As long as there is at least one more argument, keep looping
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
key="$1"
case "$key" in
# This is a flag type option. Will catch either -f or --foo
-f|--foo)
FOO=1
;;
# Also a flag type option. Will catch either -b or --bar
-b|--bar)
BAR=1
;;
# This is an arg value type option. Will catch -o value or --output-file value
-o|--output-file)
shift # past the key and to the value
OUTPUTFILE="$1"
;;
# This is an arg=value type option. Will catch -o=value or --output-file=value
-o=*|--output-file=*)
# No need to shift here since the value is part of the same string
OUTPUTFILE="${key#*=}"
;;
*)
# Do whatever you want with extra options
echo "Unknown option '$key'"
;;
esac
# Shift after checking all the cases to get the next option
shift
done
This allows you to have both space separated options/values, as well as equal defined
values.
So you could run your script using:
./myscript --foo -b -o /fizz/file.txt
as well as:
./myscript -f --bar -o=/fizz/file.txt
and both should have the same end result.
PROS:
Allows for both -arg=value and -arg value
Works with any arg name that you can use in bash
Meaning -a or -arg or --arg or -a-r-g or whatever
Pure bash. No need to learn/use getopt or getopts
CONS:
Can't combine args
Meaning no -abc. You must do -a -b -c
These are the only pros/cons I can think of off the top of my head
I have found the matter to write portable parsing in scripts so frustrating that I have
written Argbash - a FOSS
code generator that can generate the arguments-parsing code for your script plus it has some
nice features:
Thanks for writing argbash, I just used it and found it works well. I mostly went for argbash
because it's a code generator supporting the older bash 3.x found on OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
The only downside is that the code-generator approach means quite a lot of code in your main
script, compared to calling a module. – RichVel
Aug 18 '16 at 5:34
You can actually use Argbash in a way that it produces tailor-made parsing library just for
you that you can have included in your script or you can have it in a separate file and just
source it. I have added an example to
demonstrate that and I have made it more explicit in the documentation, too. –
bubla
Aug 23 '16 at 20:40
Good to know. That example is interesting but still not really clear - maybe you can change
name of the generated script to 'parse_lib.sh' or similar and show where the main script
calls it (like in the wrapping script section which is more complex use case). –
RichVel
Aug 24 '16 at 5:47
The issues were addressed in recent version of argbash: Documentation has been improved, a
quickstart argbash-init script has been introduced and you can even use argbash online at
argbash.io/generate –
bubla
Dec 2 '16 at 20:12
I read all and this one is my preferred one. I don't like to use -a=1 as argc
style. I prefer to put first the main option -options and later the special ones with single
spacing -o option . Im looking for the simplest-vs-better way to read argvs.
– erm3nda
May 20 '15 at 22:50
It's working really well but if you pass an argument to a non a: option all the following
options would be taken as arguments. You can check this line ./myscript -v -d fail -o
/fizz/someOtherFile -f ./foo/bar/someFile with your own script. -d option is not set
as d: – erm3nda
May 20 '15 at 23:25
Expanding on the excellent answer by @guneysus, here is a tweak that lets user use whichever
syntax they prefer, eg
command -x=myfilename.ext --another_switch
vs
command -x myfilename.ext --another_switch
That is to say the equals can be replaced with whitespace.
This "fuzzy interpretation" might not be to your liking, but if you are making scripts
that are interchangeable with other utilities (as is the case with mine, which must work with
ffmpeg), the flexibility is useful.
STD_IN=0
prefix=""
key=""
value=""
for keyValue in "$@"
do
case "${prefix}${keyValue}" in
-i=*|--input_filename=*) key="-i"; value="${keyValue#*=}";;
-ss=*|--seek_from=*) key="-ss"; value="${keyValue#*=}";;
-t=*|--play_seconds=*) key="-t"; value="${keyValue#*=}";;
-|--stdin) key="-"; value=1;;
*) value=$keyValue;;
esac
case $key in
-i) MOVIE=$(resolveMovie "${value}"); prefix=""; key="";;
-ss) SEEK_FROM="${value}"; prefix=""; key="";;
-t) PLAY_SECONDS="${value}"; prefix=""; key="";;
-) STD_IN=${value}; prefix=""; key="";;
*) prefix="${keyValue}=";;
esac
done
getopts works great if #1 you have it installed and #2 you intend to run it on the same
platform. OSX and Linux (for example) behave differently in this respect.
Here is a (non getopts) solution that supports equals, non-equals, and boolean flags. For
example you could run your script in this way:
./script --arg1=value1 --arg2 value2 --shouldClean
# parse the arguments.
COUNTER=0
ARGS=("$@")
while [ $COUNTER -lt $# ]
do
arg=${ARGS[$COUNTER]}
let COUNTER=COUNTER+1
nextArg=${ARGS[$COUNTER]}
if [[ $skipNext -eq 1 ]]; then
echo "Skipping"
skipNext=0
continue
fi
argKey=""
argVal=""
if [[ "$arg" =~ ^\- ]]; then
# if the format is: -key=value
if [[ "$arg" =~ \= ]]; then
argVal=$(echo "$arg" | cut -d'=' -f2)
argKey=$(echo "$arg" | cut -d'=' -f1)
skipNext=0
# if the format is: -key value
elif [[ ! "$nextArg" =~ ^\- ]]; then
argKey="$arg"
argVal="$nextArg"
skipNext=1
# if the format is: -key (a boolean flag)
elif [[ "$nextArg" =~ ^\- ]] || [[ -z "$nextArg" ]]; then
argKey="$arg"
argVal=""
skipNext=0
fi
# if the format has not flag, just a value.
else
argKey=""
argVal="$arg"
skipNext=0
fi
case "$argKey" in
--source-scmurl)
SOURCE_URL="$argVal"
;;
--dest-scmurl)
DEST_URL="$argVal"
;;
--version-num)
VERSION_NUM="$argVal"
;;
-c|--clean)
CLEAN_BEFORE_START="1"
;;
-h|--help|-help|--h)
showUsage
exit
;;
esac
done
This is how I do in a function to avoid breaking getopts run at the same time somewhere
higher in stack:
function waitForWeb () {
local OPTIND=1 OPTARG OPTION
local host=localhost port=8080 proto=http
while getopts "h:p:r:" OPTION; do
case "$OPTION" in
h)
host="$OPTARG"
;;
p)
port="$OPTARG"
;;
r)
proto="$OPTARG"
;;
esac
done
...
}
I give you The Function parse_params that will parse params:
Without polluting global scope.
Effortlessly returns to you ready to use variables so that you could build further
logic on them
Amount of dashes before params does not matter ( --all equals
-all equals all=all )
The script below is a copy-paste working demonstration. See show_use function
to understand how to use parse_params .
Limitations:
Does not support space delimited params ( -d 1 )
Param names will lose dashes so --any-param and -anyparam are
equivalent
eval $(parse_params "$@") must be used inside bash function (it will not
work in the global scope)
#!/bin/bash
# Universal Bash parameter parsing
# Parse equal sign separated params into named local variables
# Standalone named parameter value will equal its param name (--force creates variable $force=="force")
# Parses multi-valued named params into an array (--path=path1 --path=path2 creates ${path[*]} array)
# Parses un-named params into ${ARGV[*]} array
# Additionally puts all named params into ${ARGN[*]} array
# Additionally puts all standalone "option" params into ${ARGO[*]} array
# @author Oleksii Chekulaiev
# @version v1.3 (May-14-2018)
parse_params ()
{
local existing_named
local ARGV=() # un-named params
local ARGN=() # named params
local ARGO=() # options (--params)
echo "local ARGV=(); local ARGN=(); local ARGO=();"
while [[ "$1" != "" ]]; do
# Escape asterisk to prevent bash asterisk expansion
_escaped=${1/\*/\'\"*\"\'}
# If equals delimited named parameter
if [[ "$1" =~ ^..*=..* ]]; then
# Add to named parameters array
echo "ARGN+=('$_escaped');"
# key is part before first =
local _key=$(echo "$1" | cut -d = -f 1)
# val is everything after key and = (protect from param==value error)
local _val="${1/$_key=}"
# remove dashes from key name
_key=${_key//\-}
# search for existing parameter name
if (echo "$existing_named" | grep "\b$_key\b" >/dev/null); then
# if name already exists then it's a multi-value named parameter
# re-declare it as an array if needed
if ! (declare -p _key 2> /dev/null | grep -q 'declare \-a'); then
echo "$_key=(\"\$$_key\");"
fi
# append new value
echo "$_key+=('$_val');"
else
# single-value named parameter
echo "local $_key=\"$_val\";"
existing_named=" $_key"
fi
# If standalone named parameter
elif [[ "$1" =~ ^\-. ]]; then
# Add to options array
echo "ARGO+=('$_escaped');"
# remove dashes
local _key=${1//\-}
echo "local $_key=\"$_key\";"
# non-named parameter
else
# Escape asterisk to prevent bash asterisk expansion
_escaped=${1/\*/\'\"*\"\'}
echo "ARGV+=('$_escaped');"
fi
shift
done
}
#--------------------------- DEMO OF THE USAGE -------------------------------
show_use ()
{
eval $(parse_params "$@")
# --
echo "${ARGV[0]}" # print first unnamed param
echo "${ARGV[1]}" # print second unnamed param
echo "${ARGN[0]}" # print first named param
echo "${ARG0[0]}" # print first option param (--force)
echo "$anyparam" # print --anyparam value
echo "$k" # print k=5 value
echo "${multivalue[0]}" # print first value of multi-value
echo "${multivalue[1]}" # print second value of multi-value
[[ "$force" == "force" ]] && echo "\$force is set so let the force be with you"
}
show_use "param 1" --anyparam="my value" param2 k=5 --force --multi-value=test1 --multi-value=test2
You have to decide before use if = is to be used on an option or not. This is to keep the
code clean(ish).
while [[ $# > 0 ]]
do
key="$1"
while [[ ${key+x} ]]
do
case $key in
-s*|--stage)
STAGE="$2"
shift # option has parameter
;;
-w*|--workfolder)
workfolder="$2"
shift # option has parameter
;;
-e=*)
EXAMPLE="${key#*=}"
break # option has been fully handled
;;
*)
# unknown option
echo Unknown option: $key #1>&2
exit 10 # either this: my preferred way to handle unknown options
break # or this: do this to signal the option has been handled (if exit isn't used)
;;
esac
# prepare for next option in this key, if any
[[ "$key" = -? || "$key" == --* ]] && unset key || key="${key/#-?/-}"
done
shift # option(s) fully processed, proceed to next input argument
done
can be accomplished with a fairly concise approach:
# process flags
pointer=1
while [[ $pointer -le $# ]]; do
param=${!pointer}
if [[ $param != "-"* ]]; then ((pointer++)) # not a parameter flag so advance pointer
else
case $param in
# paramter-flags with arguments
-e=*|--environment=*) environment="${param#*=}";;
--another=*) another="${param#*=}";;
# binary flags
-q|--quiet) quiet=true;;
-d) debug=true;;
esac
# splice out pointer frame from positional list
[[ $pointer -gt 1 ]] \
&& set -- ${@:1:((pointer - 1))} ${@:((pointer + 1)):$#} \
|| set -- ${@:((pointer + 1)):$#};
fi
done
# positional remain
node_name=$1
ip_address=$2
--param arg (space delimited)
It's usualy clearer to not mix --flag=value and --flag value
styles.
./script.sh dumbo 127.0.0.1 --environment production -q -d
This is a little dicey to read, but is still valid
./script.sh dumbo --environment production 127.0.0.1 --quiet -d
Source
# process flags
pointer=1
while [[ $pointer -le $# ]]; do
if [[ ${!pointer} != "-"* ]]; then ((pointer++)) # not a parameter flag so advance pointer
else
param=${!pointer}
((pointer_plus = pointer + 1))
slice_len=1
case $param in
# paramter-flags with arguments
-e|--environment) environment=${!pointer_plus}; ((slice_len++));;
--another) another=${!pointer_plus}; ((slice_len++));;
# binary flags
-q|--quiet) quiet=true;;
-d) debug=true;;
esac
# splice out pointer frame from positional list
[[ $pointer -gt 1 ]] \
&& set -- ${@:1:((pointer - 1))} ${@:((pointer + $slice_len)):$#} \
|| set -- ${@:((pointer + $slice_len)):$#};
fi
done
# positional remain
node_name=$1
ip_address=$2
Note that getopt(1) was a short living mistake from AT&T.
getopt was created in 1984 but already buried in 1986 because it was not really
usable.
A proof for the fact that getopt is very outdated is that the
getopt(1) man page still mentions "$*" instead of "$@"
, that was added to the Bourne Shell in 1986 together with the getopts(1) shell
builtin in order to deal with arguments with spaces inside.
BTW: if you are interested in parsing long options in shell scripts, it may be of interest
to know that the getopt(3) implementation from libc (Solaris) and
ksh93 both added a uniform long option implementation that supports long options
as aliases for short options. This causes ksh93 and the Bourne
Shell to implement a uniform interface for long options via getopts .
An example for long options taken from the Bourne Shell man page:
This also might be useful to know, you can set a value and if someone provides input,
override the default with that value..
myscript.sh -f ./serverlist.txt or just ./myscript.sh (and it takes defaults)
#!/bin/bash
# --- set the value, if there is inputs, override the defaults.
HOME_FOLDER="${HOME}/owned_id_checker"
SERVER_FILE_LIST="${HOME_FOLDER}/server_list.txt"
while [[ $# > 1 ]]
do
key="$1"
shift
case $key in
-i|--inputlist)
SERVER_FILE_LIST="$1"
shift
;;
esac
done
echo "SERVER LIST = ${SERVER_FILE_LIST}"
Main differentiating feature of my solution is that it allows to have options concatenated
together just like tar -xzf foo.tar.gz is equal to tar -x -z -f
foo.tar.gz . And just like in tar , ps etc. the leading
hyphen is optional for a block of short options (but this can be changed easily). Long
options are supported as well (but when a block starts with one then two leading hyphens are
required).
Code with example options
#!/bin/sh
echo
echo "POSIX-compliant getopt(s)-free old-style-supporting option parser from phk@[se.unix]"
echo
print_usage() {
echo "Usage:
$0 {a|b|c} [ARG...]
Options:
--aaa-0-args
-a
Option without arguments.
--bbb-1-args ARG
-b ARG
Option with one argument.
--ccc-2-args ARG1 ARG2
-c ARG1 ARG2
Option with two arguments.
" >&2
}
if [ $# -le 0 ]; then
print_usage
exit 1
fi
opt=
while :; do
if [ $# -le 0 ]; then
# no parameters remaining -> end option parsing
break
elif [ ! "$opt" ]; then
# we are at the beginning of a fresh block
# remove optional leading hyphen and strip trailing whitespaces
opt=$(echo "$1" | sed 's/^-\?\([a-zA-Z0-9\?-]*\)/\1/')
fi
# get the first character -> check whether long option
first_chr=$(echo "$opt" | awk '{print substr($1, 1, 1)}')
[ "$first_chr" = - ] && long_option=T || long_option=F
# note to write the options here with a leading hyphen less
# also do not forget to end short options with a star
case $opt in
-)
# end of options
shift
break
;;
a*|-aaa-0-args)
echo "Option AAA activated!"
;;
b*|-bbb-1-args)
if [ "$2" ]; then
echo "Option BBB with argument '$2' activated!"
shift
else
echo "BBB parameters incomplete!" >&2
print_usage
exit 1
fi
;;
c*|-ccc-2-args)
if [ "$2" ] && [ "$3" ]; then
echo "Option CCC with arguments '$2' and '$3' activated!"
shift 2
else
echo "CCC parameters incomplete!" >&2
print_usage
exit 1
fi
;;
h*|\?*|-help)
print_usage
exit 0
;;
*)
if [ "$long_option" = T ]; then
opt=$(echo "$opt" | awk '{print substr($1, 2)}')
else
opt=$first_chr
fi
printf 'Error: Unknown option: "%s"\n' "$opt" >&2
print_usage
exit 1
;;
esac
if [ "$long_option" = T ]; then
# if we had a long option then we are going to get a new block next
shift
opt=
else
# if we had a short option then just move to the next character
opt=$(echo "$opt" | awk '{print substr($1, 2)}')
# if block is now empty then shift to the next one
[ "$opt" ] || shift
fi
done
echo "Doing something..."
exit 0
For the example usage please see the examples further below.
Position of options
with arguments
For what its worth there the options with arguments don't be the last (only long options
need to be). So while e.g. in tar (at least in some implementations) the
f options needs to be last because the file name follows ( tar xzf
bar.tar.gz works but tar xfz bar.tar.gz does not) this is not the case
here (see the later examples).
Multiple options with arguments
As another bonus the option parameters are consumed in the order of the options by the
parameters with required options. Just look at the output of my script here with the command
line abc X Y Z (or -abc X Y Z ):
Option AAA activated!
Option BBB with argument 'X' activated!
Option CCC with arguments 'Y' and 'Z' activated!
Long options concatenated as well
Also you can also have long options in option block given that they occur last in the
block. So the following command lines are all equivalent (including the order in which the
options and its arguments are being processed):
-cba Z Y X
cba Z Y X
-cb-aaa-0-args Z Y X
-c-bbb-1-args Z Y X -a
--ccc-2-args Z Y -ba X
c Z Y b X a
-c Z Y -b X -a
--ccc-2-args Z Y --bbb-1-args X --aaa-0-args
All of these lead to:
Option CCC with arguments 'Z' and 'Y' activated!
Option BBB with argument 'X' activated!
Option AAA activated!
Doing something...
Not in this solutionOptional arguments
Options with optional arguments should be possible with a bit of work, e.g. by looking
forward whether there is a block without a hyphen; the user would then need to put a hyphen
in front of every block following a block with a parameter having an optional parameter.
Maybe this is too complicated to communicate to the user so better just require a leading
hyphen altogether in this case.
Things get even more complicated with multiple possible parameters. I would advise against
making the options trying to be smart by determining whether the an argument might be for it
or not (e.g. with an option just takes a number as an optional argument) because this might
break in the future.
I personally favor additional options instead of optional arguments.
Option
arguments introduced with an equal sign
Just like with optional arguments I am not a fan of this (BTW, is there a thread for
discussing the pros/cons of different parameter styles?) but if you want this you could
probably implement it yourself just like done at http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/035#Manual_loop
with a --long-with-arg=?* case statement and then stripping the equal sign (this
is BTW the site that says that making parameter concatenation is possible with some effort
but "left [it] as an exercise for the reader" which made me take them at their word but I
started from scratch).
Other notes
POSIX-compliant, works even on ancient Busybox setups I had to deal with (with e.g.
cut , head and getopts missing).
Solution that preserves unhandled arguments. Demos Included.
Here is my solution. It is VERY flexible and unlike others, shouldn't require external
packages and handles leftover arguments cleanly.
Usage is: ./myscript -flag flagvariable -otherflag flagvar2
All you have to do is edit the validflags line. It prepends a hyphen and searches all
arguments. It then defines the next argument as the flag name e.g.
The main code (short version, verbose with examples further down, also a version with
erroring out):
#!/usr/bin/env bash
#shebang.io
validflags="rate time number"
count=1
for arg in $@
do
match=0
argval=$1
for flag in $validflags
do
sflag="-"$flag
if [ "$argval" == "$sflag" ]
then
declare $flag=$2
match=1
fi
done
if [ "$match" == "1" ]
then
shift 2
else
leftovers=$(echo $leftovers $argval)
shift
fi
count=$(($count+1))
done
#Cleanup then restore the leftovers
shift $#
set -- $leftovers
The verbose version with built in echo demos:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
#shebang.io
rate=30
time=30
number=30
echo "all args
$@"
validflags="rate time number"
count=1
for arg in $@
do
match=0
argval=$1
# argval=$(echo $@ | cut -d ' ' -f$count)
for flag in $validflags
do
sflag="-"$flag
if [ "$argval" == "$sflag" ]
then
declare $flag=$2
match=1
fi
done
if [ "$match" == "1" ]
then
shift 2
else
leftovers=$(echo $leftovers $argval)
shift
fi
count=$(($count+1))
done
#Cleanup then restore the leftovers
echo "pre final clear args:
$@"
shift $#
echo "post final clear args:
$@"
set -- $leftovers
echo "all post set args:
$@"
echo arg1: $1 arg2: $2
echo leftovers: $leftovers
echo rate $rate time $time number $number
Final one, this one errors out if an invalid -argument is passed through.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
#shebang.io
rate=30
time=30
number=30
validflags="rate time number"
count=1
for arg in $@
do
argval=$1
match=0
if [ "${argval:0:1}" == "-" ]
then
for flag in $validflags
do
sflag="-"$flag
if [ "$argval" == "$sflag" ]
then
declare $flag=$2
match=1
fi
done
if [ "$match" == "0" ]
then
echo "Bad argument: $argval"
exit 1
fi
shift 2
else
leftovers=$(echo $leftovers $argval)
shift
fi
count=$(($count+1))
done
#Cleanup then restore the leftovers
shift $#
set -- $leftovers
echo rate $rate time $time number $number
echo leftovers: $leftovers
Pros: What it does, it handles very well. It preserves unused arguments which a lot of the
other solutions here don't. It also allows for variables to be called without being defined
by hand in the script. It also allows prepopulation of variables if no corresponding argument
is given. (See verbose example).
Cons: Can't parse a single complex arg string e.g. -xcvf would process as a single
argument. You could somewhat easily write additional code into mine that adds this
functionality though.
The top answer to this question seemed a bit buggy when I tried it -- here's my solution
which I've found to be more robust:
boolean_arg=""
arg_with_value=""
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]
do
key="$1"
case $key in
-b|--boolean-arg)
boolean_arg=true
shift
;;
-a|--arg-with-value)
arg_with_value="$2"
shift
shift
;;
-*)
echo "Unknown option: $1"
exit 1
;;
*)
arg_num=$(( $arg_num + 1 ))
case $arg_num in
1)
first_normal_arg="$1"
shift
;;
2)
second_normal_arg="$1"
shift
;;
*)
bad_args=TRUE
esac
;;
esac
done
# Handy to have this here when adding arguments to
# see if they're working. Just edit the '0' to be '1'.
if [[ 0 == 1 ]]; then
echo "first_normal_arg: $first_normal_arg"
echo "second_normal_arg: $second_normal_arg"
echo "boolean_arg: $boolean_arg"
echo "arg_with_value: $arg_with_value"
exit 0
fi
if [[ $bad_args == TRUE || $arg_num < 2 ]]; then
echo "Usage: $(basename "$0") <first-normal-arg> <second-normal-arg> [--boolean-arg] [--arg-with-value VALUE]"
exit 1
fi
This example shows how to use getopt and eval and
HEREDOC and shift to handle short and long parameters with and
without a required value that follows. Also the switch/case statement is concise and easy to
follow.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# usage function
function usage()
{
cat << HEREDOC
Usage: $progname [--num NUM] [--time TIME_STR] [--verbose] [--dry-run]
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-n, --num NUM pass in a number
-t, --time TIME_STR pass in a time string
-v, --verbose increase the verbosity of the bash script
--dry-run do a dry run, don't change any files
HEREDOC
}
# initialize variables
progname=$(basename $0)
verbose=0
dryrun=0
num_str=
time_str=
# use getopt and store the output into $OPTS
# note the use of -o for the short options, --long for the long name options
# and a : for any option that takes a parameter
OPTS=$(getopt -o "hn:t:v" --long "help,num:,time:,verbose,dry-run" -n "$progname" -- "$@")
if [ $? != 0 ] ; then echo "Error in command line arguments." >&2 ; usage; exit 1 ; fi
eval set -- "$OPTS"
while true; do
# uncomment the next line to see how shift is working
# echo "\$1:\"$1\" \$2:\"$2\""
case "$1" in
-h | --help ) usage; exit; ;;
-n | --num ) num_str="$2"; shift 2 ;;
-t | --time ) time_str="$2"; shift 2 ;;
--dry-run ) dryrun=1; shift ;;
-v | --verbose ) verbose=$((verbose + 1)); shift ;;
-- ) shift; break ;;
* ) break ;;
esac
done
if (( $verbose > 0 )); then
# print out all the parameters we read in
cat <<-EOM
num=$num_str
time=$time_str
verbose=$verbose
dryrun=$dryrun
EOM
fi
# The rest of your script below
The most significant lines of the script above are these:
OPTS=$(getopt -o "hn:t:v" --long "help,num:,time:,verbose,dry-run" -n "$progname" -- "$@")
if [ $? != 0 ] ; then echo "Error in command line arguments." >&2 ; exit 1 ; fi
eval set -- "$OPTS"
while true; do
case "$1" in
-h | --help ) usage; exit; ;;
-n | --num ) num_str="$2"; shift 2 ;;
-t | --time ) time_str="$2"; shift 2 ;;
--dry-run ) dryrun=1; shift ;;
-v | --verbose ) verbose=$((verbose + 1)); shift ;;
-- ) shift; break ;;
* ) break ;;
esac
done
Short, to the point, readable, and handles just about everything (IMHO).
I get this on Mac OS X: ``` lib/bashopts.sh: line 138: declare: -A: invalid option declare:
usage: declare [-afFirtx] [-p] [name[=value] ...] Error in lib/bashopts.sh:138. 'declare -x
-A bashopts_optprop_name' exited with status 2 Call tree: 1: lib/controller.sh:4 source(...)
Exiting with status 1 ``` – Josh Wulf
Jun 24 '17 at 18:07
you can pass attribute to short or long option (if you are using block of short
options, attribute is attached to the last option)
you can use spaces or = to provide attributes, but attribute matches until
encountering hyphen+space "delimiter", so in --q=qwe tyqwe ty is
one attribute
it handles mix of all above so -o a -op attr ibute --option=att ribu te --op-tion
attribute --option att-ribute is valid
script:
#!/usr/bin/env sh
help_menu() {
echo "Usage:
${0##*/} [-h][-l FILENAME][-d]
Options:
-h, --help
display this help and exit
-l, --logfile=FILENAME
filename
-d, --debug
enable debug
"
}
parse_options() {
case $opt in
h|help)
help_menu
exit
;;
l|logfile)
logfile=${attr}
;;
d|debug)
debug=true
;;
*)
echo "Unknown option: ${opt}\nRun ${0##*/} -h for help.">&2
exit 1
esac
}
options=$@
until [ "$options" = "" ]; do
if [[ $options =~ (^ *(--([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)|-([a-zA-Z0-9-]+))(( |=)(([\_\.\?\/\\a-zA-Z0-9]?[ -]?[\_\.\?a-zA-Z0-9]+)+))?(.*)|(.+)) ]]; then
if [[ ${BASH_REMATCH[3]} ]]; then # for --option[=][attribute] or --option[=][attribute]
opt=${BASH_REMATCH[3]}
attr=${BASH_REMATCH[7]}
options=${BASH_REMATCH[9]}
elif [[ ${BASH_REMATCH[4]} ]]; then # for block options -qwert[=][attribute] or single short option -a[=][attribute]
pile=${BASH_REMATCH[4]}
while (( ${#pile} > 1 )); do
opt=${pile:0:1}
attr=""
pile=${pile/${pile:0:1}/}
parse_options
done
opt=$pile
attr=${BASH_REMATCH[7]}
options=${BASH_REMATCH[9]}
else # leftovers that don't match
opt=${BASH_REMATCH[10]}
options=""
fi
parse_options
fi
done
This takes the same approach as Noah's answer , but has less safety checks
/ safeguards. This allows us to write arbitrary arguments into the script's environment and
I'm pretty sure your use of eval here may allow command injection. – Will Barnwell
Oct 10 '17 at 23:57
You use shift on the known arguments and not on the unknown ones so your remaining
$@ will be all but the first two arguments (in the order they are passed in),
which could lead to some mistakes if you try to use $@ later. You don't need the
shift for the = parameters, since you're not handling spaces and you're getting the value
with the substring removal #*= – Jason S
Dec 3 '17 at 1:01
history also allows you to rerun a command with different syntax. For example,
if I wanted to change my previous command history | grep dnf to history |
grep ssh , I can execute the following at the prompt:
$ ^dnf^ssh^
history will rerun the command, but replace dnf with
ssh , and execute it.
Removing history
There may come a time that you want to remove some or all the commands in your history file.
If you want to delete a particular command, enter history -d <line number> .
To clear the entire contents of the history file, execute history -c .
The history file is stored in a file that you can modify, as well. Bash shell users will
find it in their Home directory as .bash_history .
Next steps
There are a number of other things that you can do with history :
Set the size of your history buffer to a certain number of commands
Record the date and time for each line in history
Prevent certain commands from being recorded in history
For more information about the history command and other interesting things you
can do with it, take a look at the GNU Bash Manual .
Although in the examples above we used integer indices in our arrays, let's consider two
occasions when that won't be the case: First, if we wanted the $i -th element of
the array, where $i is a variable containing the index of interest, we can
retrieve that element using: echo ${allThreads[$i]} . Second, to output all the
elements of an array, we replace the numeric index with the @ symbol (you can
think of @ as standing for all ): echo ${allThreads[@]}
.
Looping through array elements
With that in mind, let's loop through $allThreads and launch the pipeline for
each value of --threads :
for t in ${allThreads[@]} ; do
. / pipeline --threads $t
done
Looping through array indices
Next, let's consider a slightly different approach. Rather than looping over array
elements , we can loop over array indices :
for i in ${!allThreads[@]} ;
do
. / pipeline --threads ${allThreads[$i]}
done
Let's break that down: As we saw above, ${allThreads[@]} represents all the
elements in our array. Adding an exclamation mark to make it ${!allThreads[@]}
will return the list of all array indices (in our case 0 to 7). In other words, the
for loop is looping through all indices $i and reading the
$i -th element from $allThreads to set the value of the
--threads parameter.
This is much harsher on the eyes, so you may be wondering why I bother introducing it in the
first place. That's because there are times where you need to know both the index and the value
within a loop, e.g., if you want to ignore the first element of an array, using indices saves
you from creating an additional variable that you then increment inside the
loop.
Populating arrays
So far, we've been able to launch the pipeline for each --threads of interest.
Now, let's assume the output to our pipeline is the runtime in seconds. We would like to
capture that output at each iteration and save it in another array so we can do various
manipulations with it at the end.
Some useful syntax
But before diving into the code, we need to introduce some more syntax. First, we need to be
able to retrieve the output of a Bash command. To do so, use the following syntax:
output=$( ./my_script.sh ) , which will store the output of our commands into the
variable $output .
The second bit of syntax we need is how to append the value we just retrieved to an array.
The syntax to do that will look familiar:
myArray+=( "newElement1" "newElement2" )
The parameter sweep
Putting everything together, here is our script for launching our parameter
sweep:
allThreads = ( 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 )
allRuntimes = ()
for t in ${allThreads[@]} ; do
runtime =$ ( . / pipeline --threads $t )
allRuntimes+= ( $runtime )
done
And voilà!
What else you got?
In this article, we covered the scenario of using arrays for parameter sweeps. But I promise
there are more reasons to use Bash arrays -- here are two more examples.
Log alerting
In this scenario, your app is divided into modules, each with its own log file. We can write
a cron job script to email the right person when there are signs of trouble in certain
modules:
# List of logs and who should be notified of issues
logPaths = ( "api.log" "auth.log" "jenkins.log" "data.log" )
logEmails = ( "jay@email" "emma@email" "jon@email" "sophia@email" )
# Look for signs of trouble in each log
for i in ${!logPaths[@]} ;
do
log = ${logPaths[$i]}
stakeholder = ${logEmails[$i]}
numErrors =$ ( tail -n 100 " $log " | grep "ERROR" | wc -l )
# Warn stakeholders if recently saw > 5 errors
if [[ " $numErrors " -gt 5 ]] ;
then
emailRecipient = " $stakeholder "
emailSubject = "WARNING: ${log} showing unusual levels of errors"
emailBody = " ${numErrors} errors found in log ${log} "
echo " $emailBody " | mailx -s " $emailSubject " " $emailRecipient "
fi
done
API queries
Say you want to generate some analytics about which users comment the most on your Medium
posts. Since we don't have direct database access, SQL is out of the question, but we can use
APIs!
To avoid getting into a long discussion about API authentication and tokens, we'll instead
use JSONPlaceholder ,
a public-facing API testing service, as our endpoint. Once we query each post and retrieve the
emails of everyone who commented, we can append those emails to our results array:
# Query first 10 posts
for postId in { 1 .. 10 } ;
do
# Make API call to fetch emails of this posts's commenters
response =$ ( curl " ${endpoint} ?postId= ${postId} " )
# Use jq to parse the JSON response into an array
allEmails+= ( $ ( jq '.[].email' <<< " $response " ) )
done
Note here that I'm using the jq tool to parse JSON from the command line.
The syntax of jq is beyond the scope of this article, but I highly recommend you
look into it.
As you might imagine, there are countless other scenarios in which using Bash arrays can
help, and I hope the examples outlined in this article have given you some food for thought. If
you have other examples to share from your own work, please leave a comment below.
But
wait, there's more!
Since we covered quite a bit of array syntax in this article, here's a summary of what we
covered, along with some more advanced tricks we did not cover:
Syntax
Result
arr=()
Create an empty array
arr=(1 2 3)
Initialize array
${arr[2]}
Retrieve third element
${arr[@]}
Retrieve all elements
${!arr[@]}
Retrieve array indices
${#arr[@]}
Calculate array size
arr[0]=3
Overwrite 1st element
arr+=(4)
Append value(s)
str=$(ls)
Save ls output as a string
arr=( $(ls) )
Save ls output as an array of files
${arr[@]:s:n}
Retrieve elements at indices n to s+n
One last thought
As we've discovered, Bash arrays sure have strange syntax, but I hope this article convinced
you that they are extremely powerful. Once you get the hang of the syntax, you'll find yourself
using Bash arrays quite often.
... ... ...
Robert Aboukhalil is a Bioinformatics Software Engineer. In his work, he develops
cloud applications for the analysis and interactive visualization of genomics data. Robert
holds a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a B.Eng. in Computer
Engineering from McGill.
In this article, we will share a number of Bash command-line shortcuts useful for any Linux
user. These shortcuts allow you to easily and in a fast manner, perform certain activities such
as accessing and running previously executed commands, opening an editor,
editing/deleting/changing text on the command line, moving the cursor, controlling processes
etc. on the command line.
Although this article will mostly benefit Linux beginners getting their way around with
command line basics, those with intermediate skills and advanced users might also find it
practically helpful. We will group the bash keyboard shortcuts according to categories as
follows.
Launch an Editor
Open a terminal and press Ctrl+X and Ctrl+E to open an editor (
nano editor ) with an empty buffer. Bash will try to launch the editor defined by the $EDITOR
environment variable.
Nano Editor Controlling The Screen
These shortcuts are used to control terminal screen output:
Ctrl+L – clears the screen (same effect as the " clear "
command).
Ctrl+S – pause all command output to the screen. If you have executed
a command that produces verbose, long output, use this to pause the output scrolling down the
screen.
Ctrl+Q – resume output to the screen after pausing it with Ctrl+S
.
Move Cursor on The Command Line
The next shortcuts are used for moving the cursor within the command-line:
Ctrl+A or Home – moves the cursor to the start of a
line.
Ctrl+E or End – moves the cursor to the end of the
line.
Ctrl+B or Left Arrow – moves the cursor back one
character at a time.
Ctrl+F or Right Arrow – moves the cursor forward one
character at a time.
Ctrl + Left Arrow or Alt+B or Esc and
then B – moves the cursor back one word at a time.
Ctrl + Right Arrow or Alt+C or Esc
and then F – moves the cursor forward one word at a time.
Search Through Bash History
The following shortcuts are used for searching for commands in the bash history:
Up arrow key – retrieves the previous command. If you press it
constantly, it takes you through multiple commands in history, so you can find the one you
want. Use the Down arrow to move in the reverse direction through the history.
Ctrl+P and Ctrl+N – alternatives for the Up and Down
arrow keys, respectively.
Ctrl+R – starts a reverse search, through the bash history, simply
type characters that should be unique to the command you want to find in the history.
Ctrl+S – launches a forward search, through the bash history.
Ctrl+G – quits reverse or forward search, through the bash
history.
Delete Text on the Command Line
The following shortcuts are used for deleting text on the command line:
Ctrl+D or Delete – remove or deletes the character under
the cursor.
Ctrl+K – removes all text from the cursor to the end of the line.
Ctrl+X and then Backspace – removes all the text from the
cursor to the beginning of the line.
Transpose Text or Change Case on the Command Line
These shortcuts will transpose or change the case of letters or words on the command
line:
Ctrl+T – transposes the character before the cursor with the character
under the cursor.
Esc and then T – transposes the two words immediately
before (or under) the cursor.
Esc and then U – transforms the text from the cursor to
the end of the word to uppercase.
Esc and then L – transforms the text from the cursor to
the end of the word to lowercase.
Esc and then C – changes the letter under the cursor (or
the first letter of the next word) to uppercase, leaving the rest of the word unchanged.
Working With Processes in Linux
The following shortcuts help you to control running Linux processes.
Ctrl+Z – suspend the current foreground process. This sends the
SIGTSTP signal to the process. You can get the process back to the foreground later using the
fg process_name (or %bgprocess_number like %1 , %2 and so on) command.
Ctrl+C – interrupt the current foreground process, by sending the
SIGINT signal to it. The default behavior is to terminate a process gracefully, but the
process can either honor or ignore it.
Ctrl+D – exit the bash shell (same as running the exit command).
In the final part of this article, we will explain some useful ! (bang)
operations:
!! – execute last command.
!top – execute the most recent command that starts with 'top' (e.g. !
).
!top:p – displays the command that !top would run (also adds it as the
latest command in the command history).
!$ – execute the last word of the previous command (same as Alt + .,
e.g. if last command is ' cat tecmint.txt ', then !$ would try to run ' tecmint.txt ').
!$:p – displays the word that !$ would execute.
!* – displays the last word of the previous command.
!*:p – displays the last word that !* would substitute.
For more information, see the bash man page:
$ man bash
That's all for now! In this article, we shared some common and useful Bash command-line
shortcuts and operations. Use the comment form below to make any additions or ask
questions.
Bash Range: How to iterate over sequences generated on the shell 2 days ago You can iterate the sequence of numbers in
bash by two ways. One is by using seq command and another is by specifying range in for loop. In seq command, the sequence starts
from one, the number increments by one in each step and print each number in each line up to the upper limit by default. If the number
starts from upper limit then it decrements by one in each step. Normally, all numbers are interpreted as floating point but if the
sequence starts from integer then the list of decimal integers will print. If seq command can execute successfully then it returns
0, otherwise it returns any non-zero number. You can also iterate the sequence of numbers using for loop with range. Both seq command
and for loop with range are shown in this tutorial by using examples.
The options of seq command:
You can use seq command by using the following options.
-w This option is used to pad the numbers with leading zeros to print all numbers with equal width.
-f format This option is used to print number with particular format. Floating number can be formatted by using %f,
%g and %e as conversion characters. %g is used as default.
-s string This option is used to separate the numbers with string. The default value is newline ('\n').
Examples of seq command:
You can apply seq command by three ways. You can use only upper limit or upper and lower limit or upper and lower limit with increment
or decrement value of each step . Different uses of the seq command with options are shown in the following examples.
Example-1: seq command without option
When only upper limit is used then the number will start from 1 and increment by one in each step. The following command
will print the number from 1 to 4.
$ seq 4
When the two values are used with seq command then first value will be used as starting number and second value will be used as
ending number. The following command will print the number from 7 to 15.
$ seq 7 15
When you will use three values with seq command then the second value will be used as increment or decrement value for each step.
For the following command, the starting number is 10, ending number is 1 and each step will be counted by decrementing 2.
$ seq 10 -2 1
Example-2: seq with –w option
The following command will print the output by adding leading zero for the number from 1 to 9.
$ seq -w 0110
Example-3: seq with –s option
The following command uses "-" as separator for each sequence number. The sequence of numbers will print by adding "-" as separator.
$ seq -s - 8
Example-4: seq with -f option
The following command will print 10 date values starting from 1. Here, "%g" option is used to add sequence number with other string
value.
$ seq -f "%g/04/2018" 10
The following command is used to generate the sequence of floating point number using "%f" . Here, the number will start from
3 and increment by 0.8 in each step and the last number will be less than or equal to 6.
$ seq -f "%f" 3 0.8 6
Example-5: Write the sequence in a file
If you want to save the sequence of number into a file without printing in the console then you can use the following commands.
The first command will print the numbers to a file named " seq.txt ". The number will generate from 5 to 20 and increment by 10 in
each step. The second command is used to view the content of " seq.txt" file.
seq 5 10 20 | cat > seq.txt
cat seq.txt
Example-6: Using seq in for loop
Suppose, you want to create files named fn1 to fn10 using for loop with seq. Create a file named "sq1.bash" and add the following
code. For loop will iterate for 10 times using seq command and create 10 files in the sequence fn1, fn2,fn3 ..fn10.
#!/bin/bash
for i in ` seq 10 ` ; do
touch fn. $i
done
Run the following commands to execute the code of the bash file and check the files are created or not.
bash sq1.bash
ls
Examples of for loop with range:Example-7: For loop with range
The alternative of seq command is range. You can use range in for loop to generate sequence of numbers like seq. Write the following
code in a bash file named " sq2.bash ". The loop will iterate for 5 times and print the square root of each number in each step.
#!/bin/bash
for n in { 1 .. 5 } ; do
(( result =n * n ))
echo $n square = $result
done
Run the command to execute the script of the file.
bash sq2.bash
Example-8: For loop with range and increment value
By default, the number is increment by one in each step in range like seq. You can also change the increment value in range. Write
the following code in a bash file named " sq3.bash ". The for loop in the script will iterate for 5 times, each step is incremented
by 2 and print all odd numbers between 1 to 10.
#!/bin/bash
echo "all odd numbers from 1 to 10 are"
for i in { 1 .. 10 .. 2 }; do
echo $i ;
done
Run the command to execute the script of the file.
bash sq3.bash
If you want to work with the sequence of numbers then you can use any of the options that are shown in this tutorial. After completing
this tutorial, you will be able to use seq command and for loop with range more efficiently in your bash script.
Bash completion is a functionality through which Bash helps users type their commands more
quickly and easily. It does this by presenting possible options when users press the Tab key
while typing a command.
The completion script is code that uses the builtin Bash command complete to
define which completion suggestions can be displayed for a given executable . The nature of the
completion options vary, from simple static to highly sophisticated. Why bother?
This functionality helps users by:
saving them from typing text when it can be auto-completed
helping them know the available continuations to their commands
preventing errors and improving their experience by hiding or showing options based on
what they have already typed
Hands-on
Here's what we will do in this tutorial:
We will first create a dummy executable script called dothis . All it does is
execute the command that resides on the number that was passed as an argument in the user's
history. For example, the following command will simply execute the ls -a command,
given that it exists in history with number 235 :
dothis 235
Then we will create a Bash completion script that will display commands along with their
number from the user's history, and we will "bind" it to the dothis
executable.
$ dothis < tab >< tab >
215 ls
216 ls -la
217 cd ~
218 man history
219 git status
220 history | cut -c 8 - bash_screen.png
Create a file named dothis in your working directory and add the following
code:
if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
echo "No command number passed"
exit 2
fi
exists =$ ( fc -l -1000 | grep ^ $1 -- 2 >/ dev / null )
if [ -n " $exists " ] ; then
fc -s -- "$1"
else
echo "Command with number $1 was not found in recent history"
exit 2
fi
Notes:
We first check if the script was called with an argument
We then check if the specific number is included in the last 1000 commands
if it exists, we execute the command using the fc functionality
otherwise, we display an error message
Make the script executable with:
chmod +x ./dothis
We will execute this script many times in this tutorial, so I suggest you place it in a
folder that is included in your path so that we can access it from anywhere by
typing dothis .
I installed it in my home bin folder using:
install ./dothis ~/bin/dothis
You can do the same given that you have a ~/bin folder and it is included in
your PATH variable.
Check to see if it's working:
dothis
You should see this:
$ dothis
No command number passed
Done.
Creating the completion script
Create a file named dothis-completion.bash . From now on, we will refer to this
file with the term completion script .
Once we add some code to it, we will source it to allow the completion to take
effect. We must source this file every single time we change something in it .
Later in this tutorial, we will discuss our options for registering this script whenever a
Bash shell opens.
Static completion
Suppose that the dothis program supported a list of commands, for example:
now
tomorrow
never
Let's use the complete command to register this list for completion. To use the
proper terminology, we say we use the complete command to define a completion
specification ( compspec ) for our program.
Here's what we specified with the complete command above:
we used the -W ( wordlist ) option to provide a list of words for
completion.
we defined to which "program" these completion words will be used (the
dothis parameter)
Source the file:
source ./dothis-completion.bash
Now try pressing Tab twice in the command line, as shown below:
$ dothis < tab
>< tab >
never now tomorrow
Try again after typing the n :
$ dothis n < tab >< tab >
never now
Magic! The completion options are automatically filtered to match only those starting with
n .
Note: The options are not displayed in the order that we defined them in the word list; they
are automatically sorted.
There are many other options to be used instead of the -W that we used in this
section. Most produce completions in a fixed manner, meaning that we don't intervene
dynamically to filter their output.
For example, if we want to have directory names as completion words for the
dothis program, we would change the complete command to the following:
complete -A directory dothis
Pressing Tab after the dothis program would get us a list of the directories in
the current directory from which we execute the script:
We will be producing the completions of the dothis executable with the
following logic:
If the user presses the Tab key right after the command, we will show the last 50
executed commands along with their numbers in history
If the user presses the Tab key after typing a number that matches more than one command
from history, we will show only those commands along with their numbers in history
If the user presses the Tab key after a number that matches exactly one command in
history, we auto-complete the number without appending the command's literal (if this is
confusing, no worries -- you will understand later)
Let's start by defining a function that will execute each time the user requests completion
on a dothis command. Change the completion script to this:
we used the -F flag in the complete command defining that the
_dothis_completions is the function that will provide the completions of the
dothis executable
COMPREPLY is an array variable used to store the completions -- the
completion mechanism uses this variable to display its contents as completions
Now source the script and go for completion:
$ dothis < tab >< tab >
never now tomorrow
Perfect. We produce the same completions as in the previous section with the word list. Or
not? Try this:
$ dothis nev < tab >< tab >
never now tomorrow
As you can see, even though we type nev and then request for completion, the available
options are always the same and nothing gets completed automatically. Why is this
happening?
The contents of the COMPREPLY variable are always displayed. The function is
now responsible for adding/removing entries from there.
If the COMPREPLY variable had only one element, then that word would be
automatically completed in the command. Since the current implementation always returns the
same three words, this will not happen.
Enter compgen : a builtin command that generates completions supporting most of
the options of the complete command (ex. -W for word list,
-d for directories) and filtering them based on what the user has already
typed.
Don't worry if you feel confused; everything will become clear later.
Type the following in the console to better understand what compgen does:
$
compgen -W "now tomorrow never"
now
tomorrow
never
$ compgen -W "now tomorrow never" n
now
never
$ compgen -W "now tomorrow never" t
tomorrow
So now we can use it, but we need to find a way to know what has been typed after the
dothis command. We already have the way: The Bash completion facilities provide
Bash
variables related to the completion taking place. Here are the more important ones:
COMP_WORDS : an array of all the words typed after the name of the program
the compspec belongs to
COMP_CWORD : an index of the COMP_WORDS array pointing to the
word the current cursor is at -- in other words, the index of the word the cursor was when
the tab key was pressed
COMP_LINE : the current command line
To access the word just after the dothis word, we can use the value of
COMP_WORDS[1]
Now, instead of the words now, tomorrow, never , we would like to see actual
numbers from the command history.
The fc -l command followed by a negative number -n displays the
last n commands. So we will use:
fc -l -50
which lists the last 50 executed commands along with their numbers. The only manipulation we
need to do is replace tabs with spaces to display them properly from the completion mechanism.
sed to the rescue.
We do have a problem, though. Try typing a number as you see it in your completion list and
then press the key again.
$ dothis 623 < tab >
$ dothis 623 ls 623 ls -la
...
$ dothis 623 ls 623 ls 623 ls 623 ls 623 ls -la
This is happening because in our completion script, we used the
${COMP_WORDS[1]} to always check the first typed word after the
dothis command (the number 623 in the above snippet). Hence the
completion continues to suggest the same completion again and again when the Tab key is
pressed.
To fix this, we will not allow any kind of completion to take place if at least one argument
has already been typed. We will add a condition in our function that checks the size of the
aforementioned COMP_WORDS array.
#/usr/bin/env bash
_dothis_completions ()
{
if [ " ${#COMP_WORDS[@]} " ! = "2" ] ; then
return
fi
$ dothis 623 < tab >
$ dothis 623 ls -la < tab > # SUCCESS: nothing happens here
There is another thing we don't like, though. We do want to display the numbers along with
the corresponding commands to help users decide which one is desired, but when there is only
one completion suggestion and it gets automatically picked by the completion mechanism, we
shouldn't append the command literal too .
In other words, our dothis executable accepts only a number, and we haven't
added any functionality to check or expect other arguments. When our completion function gives
only one result, we should trim the command literal and respond only with the command
number.
To accomplish this, we will keep the response of the compgen command in an
array variable, and if its size is 1 , we will trim the one and only element to keep just the
number. Otherwise, we'll let the array as is.
Change the completion script to this:
#/usr/bin/env bash
_dothis_completions ()
{
if [ " ${#COMP_WORDS[@]} " ! = "2" ] ; then
return
fi
# keep the suggestions in a local variable
local suggestions = ( $ ( compgen -W " $(fc -l -50 | sed 's/\t/ /') " -- " ${COMP_WORDS[1]} "
))
if [ " ${#suggestions[@]} " == "1" ] ; then
# if there's only one match, we remove the command literal
# to proceed with the automatic completion of the number
local number =$ ( echo ${suggestions[0]/%\ */} )
COMPREPLY = ( " $number " )
else
# more than one suggestions resolved,
# respond with the suggestions intact
COMPREPLY = ( " ${suggestions[@]} " )
fi
}
complete -F _dothis_completions dothis
Registering the completion script
If you want to enable the completion just for you on your machine, all you have to do is add
a line in your .bashrc file sourcing the script:
If you want to enable the completion for all users, you can just copy the script under
/etc/bash_completion.d/ and it will automatically be loaded by
Bash.
Fine-tuning the completion script
Here are some extra steps for better results:
Displaying each entry in a new line
In the Bash completion script I was working on, I too had to present suggestions consisting
of two parts. I wanted to display the first part in the default color and the second part in
gray to distinguish it as help text. In this tutorial's example, it would be nice to present
the numbers in the default color and the command literal in a less fancy one.
Unfortunately, this is not possible, at least for now, because the completions are displayed
as plain text and color directives are not processed (for example: \e[34mBlue
).
What we can do to improve the user experience (or not) is to display each entry in a new
line. This solution is not that obvious since we can't just append a new line character in each
COMPREPLY entry. We will follow a rather
hackish method and pad suggestion literals to a width that fills the terminal.
Enter printf . If you want to display each suggestion on each own line, change
the completion script to the following:
#/usr/bin/env bash
_dothis_completions ()
{
if [ " ${#COMP_WORDS[@]} " ! = "2" ] ; then
return
fi
local IFS =$ '\n'
local suggestions = ( $ ( compgen -W " $(fc -l -50 | sed 's/\t//') " -- " ${COMP_WORDS[1]} "
))
if [ " ${#suggestions[@]} " == "1" ] ; then
local number = " ${suggestions[0]/%\ */} "
COMPREPLY = ( " $number " )
else
for i in " ${!suggestions[@]} " ; do
suggestions [ $i ] = " $(printf '%*s' "-$COLUMNS" "${suggestions[$i]}") "
done
In our case, we hard-coded to display the last 50 commands for completion. This is not a
good practice. We should first respect what each user might prefer. If he/she hasn't made any
preference, we should default to 50.
To accomplish that, we will check if an environment variable
DOTHIS_COMPLETION_COMMANDS_NUMBER has been set.
Change the completion script one last time:
#/usr/bin/env bash
_dothis_completions ()
{
if [ " ${#COMP_WORDS[@]} " ! = "2" ] ; then
return
fi
local commands_number = ${DOTHIS_COMPLETION_COMMANDS_NUMBER:-50}
local IFS =$ '\n'
local suggestions = ( $ ( compgen -W " $(fc -l -$commands_number | sed 's/\t//') " -- "
${COMP_WORDS[1]} " ))
if [ " ${#suggestions[@]} " == "1" ] ; then
local number = " ${suggestions[0]/%\ */} "
COMPREPLY = ( " $number " )
else
for i in " ${!suggestions[@]} " ; do
suggestions [ $i ] = " $(printf '%*s' "-$COLUMNS" "${suggestions[$i]}") "
done
You can find the code of this tutorial on GitHub .
For feedback, comments, typos, etc., please open an issue in the
repository.
Lazarus Lazaridis - I am an open source enthusiast and I like helping developers with
tutorials and tools . I usually code
in Ruby especially when it's on Rails but I also speak Java, Go, bash & C#. I have studied
CS at Athens University of Economics and Business and I live in Athens, Greece. My nickname is
iridakos and I publish tech related posts on my personal blog iridakos.com .
For example, if you have a directory ~/Documents/Phone-Backup/Linux-Docs/Ubuntu/ , using
gogo , you can create an alias (a shortcut name), for instance Ubuntu to access it
without typing the whole path anymore. No matter your current working directory, you can move
into ~/cd Documents/Phone-Backup/Linux-Docs/Ubuntu/ by simply using the alias
Ubuntu .
In addition, it also allows you to create aliases for connecting directly into directories
on remote Linux servers.
How to Install Gogo in Linux Systems
To install Gogo , first clone the gogo repository from Github and then copy the
gogo.py to any directory in your PATH environmental variable (if you already have
the ~/bin/ directory, you can place it here, otherwise create it).
$ git clone https://github.com/mgoral/gogo.git
$ cd gogo/
$ mkdir -p ~/bin #run this if you do not have ~/bin directory
$ cp gogo.py ~/bin/
... ... ...
To start using gogo , you need to logout and login back to use it. Gogo
stores its configuration in ~/.config/gogo/gogo.conf file (which should be auto
created if it doesn't exist) and has the following syntax.
# Comments are lines that start from '#' character.
default = ~/something
alias = /desired/path
alias2 = /desired/path with space
alias3 = "/this/also/works"
zażółć = "unicode/is/also/supported/zażółć gęślą jaźń"
If you run gogo run without any arguments, it will go to the directory specified in default;
this alias is always available, even if it's not in the configuration file, and points to $HOME
directory.
"... Lukas Jelinek is the author of the incron package that allows users to specify tables of inotify events that are executed by the master incrond process. Despite the reference to "cron", the package does not schedule events at regular intervals -- it is a tool for filesystem events, and the cron reference is slightly misleading. ..."
"... The incron package is available from EPEL ..."
It is, at times, important to know when things change in the Linux OS. The uses to which
systems are placed often include high-priority data that must be processed as soon as it is
seen. The conventional method of finding and processing new file data is to poll for it,
usually with cron. This is inefficient, and it can tax performance unreasonably if too many
polling events are forked too often.
Linux has an efficient method for alerting user-space processes to changes impacting files
of interest. The inotify Linux system calls were first discussed here in Linux Journal
in a 2005 article by Robert
Love who primarily addressed the behavior of the new features from the perspective of
C.
However, there also are stable shell-level utilities and new classes of monitoring
dæmons for registering filesystem watches and reporting events. Linux installations using
systemd also can access basic inotify functionality with path units. The inotify interface does
have limitations -- it can't monitor remote, network-mounted filesystems (that is, NFS); it
does not report the userid involved in the event; it does not work with /proc or other
pseudo-filesystems; and mmap() operations do not trigger it, among other concerns. Even with
these limitations, it is a tremendously useful feature.
This article completes the work begun by Love and gives everyone who can write a Bourne
shell script or set a crontab the ability to react to filesystem changes.
The inotifywait
Utility
Working under Oracle Linux 7 (or similar versions of Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific Linux), the
inotify shell tools are not installed by default, but you can load them with yum:
# yum install inotify-tools
Loaded plugins: langpacks, ulninfo
ol7_UEKR4 | 1.2 kB 00:00
ol7_latest | 1.4 kB 00:00
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package inotify-tools.x86_64 0:3.14-8.el7 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Dependencies Resolved
==============================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
==============================================================
Installing:
inotify-tools x86_64 3.14-8.el7 ol7_latest 50 k
Transaction Summary
==============================================================
Install 1 Package
Total download size: 50 k
Installed size: 111 k
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
inotify-tools-3.14-8.el7.x86_64.rpm | 50 kB 00:00
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.
Installing : inotify-tools-3.14-8.el7.x86_64 1/1
Verifying : inotify-tools-3.14-8.el7.x86_64 1/1
Installed:
inotify-tools.x86_64 0:3.14-8.el7
Complete!
The package will include two utilities (inotifywait and inotifywatch), documentation and a
number of libraries. The inotifywait program is of primary interest.
Some derivatives of Red Hat 7 may not include inotify in their base repositories. If you
find it missing, you can obtain it from Fedora's EPEL repository , either by downloading the
inotify RPM for manual installation or adding the EPEL repository to yum.
Any user on the system who can launch a shell may register watches -- no special privileges
are required to use the interface. This example watches the /tmp directory:
$ inotifywait -m /tmp
Setting up watches.
Watches established.
If another session on the system performs a few operations on the files in /tmp:
A few relevant sections of the manual page explain what is happening:
$ man inotifywait | col -b | sed -n '/diagnostic/,/helpful/p'
inotifywait will output diagnostic information on standard error and
event information on standard output. The event output can be config-
ured, but by default it consists of lines of the following form:
watched_filename EVENT_NAMES event_filename
watched_filename
is the name of the file on which the event occurred. If the
file is a directory, a trailing slash is output.
EVENT_NAMES
are the names of the inotify events which occurred, separated by
commas.
event_filename
is output only when the event occurred on a directory, and in
this case the name of the file within the directory which caused
this event is output.
By default, any special characters in filenames are not escaped
in any way. This can make the output of inotifywait difficult
to parse in awk scripts or similar. The --csv and --format
options will be helpful in this case.
It also is possible to filter the output by registering particular events of interest with
the -e option, the list of which is shown here:
access
create
move_self
attrib
delete
moved_to
close_write
delete_self
moved_from
close_nowrite
modify
open
close
move
unmount
A common application is testing for the arrival of new files. Since inotify must be given
the name of an existing filesystem object to watch, the directory containing the new files is
provided. A trigger of interest is also easy to provide -- new files should be complete and
ready for processing when the close_write trigger fires. Below is an example
script to watch for these events:
#!/bin/sh
unset IFS # default of space, tab and nl
# Wait for filesystem events
inotifywait -m -e close_write \
/tmp /var/tmp /home/oracle/arch-orcl/ |
while read dir op file
do [[ "${dir}" == '/tmp/' && "${file}" == *.txt ]] &&
echo "Import job should start on $file ($dir $op)."
[[ "${dir}" == '/var/tmp/' && "${file}" == CLOSE_WEEK*.txt ]] &&
echo Weekly backup is ready.
[[ "${dir}" == '/home/oracle/arch-orcl/' && "${file}" == *.ARC ]]
&&
su - oracle -c 'ORACLE_SID=orcl ~oracle/bin/log_shipper' &
[[ "${dir}" == '/tmp/' && "${file}" == SHUT ]] && break
((step+=1))
done
echo We processed $step events.
There are a few problems with the script as presented -- of all the available shells on
Linux, only ksh93 (that is, the AT&T Korn shell) will report the "step" variable correctly
at the end of the script. All the other shells will report this variable as null.
The reason for this behavior can be found in a brief explanation on the manual page for
Bash: "Each command in a pipeline is executed as a separate process (i.e., in a subshell)." The
MirBSD clone of the Korn shell has a slightly longer explanation:
# man mksh | col -b | sed -n '/The parts/,/do so/p'
The parts of a pipeline, like below, are executed in subshells. Thus,
variable assignments inside them fail. Use co-processes instead.
foo | bar | read baz # will not change $baz
foo | bar |& read -p baz # will, however, do so
And, the pdksh documentation in Oracle Linux 5 (from which MirBSD mksh emerged) has several
more mentions of the subject:
General features of at&t ksh88 that are not (yet) in pdksh:
- the last command of a pipeline is not run in the parent shell
- `echo foo | read bar; echo $bar' prints foo in at&t ksh, nothing
in pdksh (ie, the read is done in a separate process in pdksh).
- in pdksh, if the last command of a pipeline is a shell builtin, it
is not executed in the parent shell, so "echo a b | read foo bar"
does not set foo and bar in the parent shell (at&t ksh will).
This may get fixed in the future, but it may take a while.
$ man pdksh | col -b | sed -n '/BTW, the/,/aware/p'
BTW, the most frequently reported bug is
echo hi | read a; echo $a # Does not print hi
I'm aware of this and there is no need to report it.
This behavior is easy enough to demonstrate -- running the script above with the default
bash shell and providing a sequence of example events:
# ./inotify.sh
Setting up watches.
Watches established.
Import job should start on newdata.txt (/tmp/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE).
Weekly backup is ready.
We processed events.
Examining the process list while the script is running, you'll also see two shells, one
forked for the control structure:
$ function pps { typeset a IFS=\| ; ps ax | while read a
do case $a in *$1*|+([!0-9])) echo $a;; esac; done }
$ pps inot
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
3394 pts/1 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh ./inotify.sh
3395 pts/1 S+ 0:00 inotifywait -m -e close_write /tmp /var/tmp
3396 pts/1 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh ./inotify.sh
As it was manipulated in a subshell, the "step" variable above was null when control flow
reached the echo. Switching this from #/bin/sh to #/bin/ksh93 will correct the problem, and
only one shell process will be seen:
# ./inotify.ksh93
Setting up watches.
Watches established.
Import job should start on newdata.txt (/tmp/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE).
Weekly backup is ready.
We processed 2 events.
$ pps inot
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
3583 pts/1 S+ 0:00 /bin/ksh93 ./inotify.sh
3584 pts/1 S+ 0:00 inotifywait -m -e close_write /tmp /var/tmp
Although ksh93 behaves properly and in general handles scripts far more gracefully than all
of the other Linux shells, it is rather large:
The mksh binary is the smallest of the Bourne implementations above (some of these shells
may be missing on your system, but you can install them with yum). For a long-term monitoring
process, mksh is likely the best choice for reducing both processing and memory footprint, and
it does not launch multiple copies of itself when idle assuming that a coprocess is used.
Converting the script to use a Korn coprocess that is friendly to mksh is not difficult:
#!/bin/mksh
unset IFS # default of space, tab and nl
# Wait for filesystem events
inotifywait -m -e close_write \
/tmp/ /var/tmp/ /home/oracle/arch-orcl/ \
2</dev/null |& # Launch as Korn coprocess
while read -p dir op file # Read from Korn coprocess
do [[ "${dir}" == '/tmp/' && "${file}" == *.txt ]] &&
print "Import job should start on $file ($dir $op)."
[[ "${dir}" == '/var/tmp/' && "${file}" == CLOSE_WEEK*.txt ]] &&
print Weekly backup is ready.
[[ "${dir}" == '/home/oracle/arch-orcl/' && "${file}" == *.ARC ]]
&&
su - oracle -c 'ORACLE_SID=orcl ~oracle/bin/log_shipper' &
[[ "${dir}" == '/tmp/' && "${file}" == SHUT ]] && break
((step+=1))
done
echo We processed $step events.
Flush its standard output whenever it writes a message.
An fflush(NULL) is found in the main processing loop of the inotifywait source,
and these requirements appear to be met.
The mksh version of the script is the most reasonable compromise for efficient use and
correct behavior, and I have explained it at some length here to save readers trouble and
frustration -- it is important to avoid control structures executing in subshells in most of
the Borne family. However, hopefully all of these ersatz shells someday fix this basic flaw and
implement the Korn behavior correctly.
A Practical Application -- Oracle Log Shipping
Oracle databases that are configured for hot backups produce a stream of "archived redo log
files" that are used for database recovery. These are the most critical backup files that are
produced in an Oracle database.
These files are numbered sequentially and are written to a log directory configured by the
DBA. An inotifywatch can trigger activities to compress, encrypt and/or distribute the archived
logs to backup and disaster recovery servers for safekeeping. You can configure Oracle RMAN to
do most of these functions, but the OS tools are more capable, flexible and simpler to use.
There are a number of important design parameters for a script handling archived logs:
A "critical section" must be established that allows only a single process to manipulate
the archived log files at a time. Oracle will sometimes write bursts of log files, and
inotify might cause the handler script to be spawned repeatedly in a short amount of time.
Only one instance of the handler script can be allowed to run -- any others spawned during
the handler's lifetime must immediately exit. This will be achieved with a textbook
application of the flock program from the util-linux package.
The optimum compression available for production applications appears to be lzip . The author claims that the integrity of
his archive format is superior to many more well known
utilities , both in compression ability and also structural integrity. The lzip binary is
not in the standard repository for Oracle Linux -- it is available in EPEL and is easily
compiled from source.
Note that 7-Zip uses the same LZMA
algorithm as lzip, and it also will perform AES encryption on the data after compression.
Encryption is a desirable feature, as it will exempt a business from
breach disclosure laws in most US states if the backups are lost or stolen and they
contain "Protected Personal Information" (PPI), such as birthdays or Social Security Numbers.
The author of lzip does have harsh things to say regarding the quality of 7-Zip archives
using LZMA2, and the openssl enc program can be used to apply AES encryption
after compression to lzip archives or any other type of file, as I discussed in a previous
article . I'm foregoing file encryption in the script below and using lzip for
clarity.
The current log number will be recorded in a dot file in the Oracle user's home
directory. If a log is skipped for some reason (a rare occurrence for an Oracle database),
log shipping will stop. A missing log requires an immediate and full database backup (either
cold or hot) -- successful recoveries of Oracle databases cannot skip logs.
The scp program will be used to copy the log to a remote server, and it
should be called repeatedly until it returns successfully.
I'm calling the genuine '93 Korn shell for this activity, as it is the most capable
scripting shell and I don't want any surprises.
Given these design parameters, this is an implementation:
# cat ~oracle/archutils/process_logs
#!/bin/ksh93
set -euo pipefail
IFS=$'\n\t' # http://redsymbol.net/articles/unofficial-bash-strict-mode/
(
flock -n 9 || exit 1 # Critical section-allow only one process.
ARCHDIR=~oracle/arch-${ORACLE_SID}
APREFIX=${ORACLE_SID}_1_
ASUFFIX=.ARC
CURLOG=$(<~oracle/.curlog-$ORACLE_SID)
File="${ARCHDIR}/${APREFIX}${CURLOG}${ASUFFIX}"
[[ ! -f "$File" ]] && exit
while [[ -f "$File" ]]
do ((NEXTCURLOG=CURLOG+1))
NextFile="${ARCHDIR}/${APREFIX}${NEXTCURLOG}${ASUFFIX}"
[[ ! -f "$NextFile" ]] && sleep 60 # Ensure ARCH has finished
nice /usr/local/bin/lzip -9q "$File"
until scp "${File}.lz" "yourcompany.com:~oracle/arch-$ORACLE_SID"
do sleep 5
done
CURLOG=$NEXTCURLOG
File="$NextFile"
done
echo $CURLOG > ~oracle/.curlog-$ORACLE_SID
) 9>~oracle/.processing_logs-$ORACLE_SID
The above script can be executed manually for testing even while the inotify handler is
running, as the flock protects it.
A standby server, or a DataGuard server in primitive standby mode, can apply the archived
logs at regular intervals. The script below forces a 12-hour delay in log application for the
recovery of dropped or damaged objects, so inotify cannot be easily used in this case -- cron
is a more reasonable approach for delayed file processing, and a run every 20 minutes will keep
the standby at the desired recovery point:
# cat ~oracle/archutils/delay-lock.sh
#!/bin/ksh93
(
flock -n 9 || exit 1 # Critical section-only one process.
WINDOW=43200 # 12 hours
LOG_DEST=~oracle/arch-$ORACLE_SID
OLDLOG_DEST=$LOG_DEST-applied
function fage { print $(( $(date +%s) - $(stat -c %Y "$1") ))
} # File age in seconds - Requires GNU extended date & stat
cd $LOG_DEST
of=$(ls -t | tail -1) # Oldest file in directory
[[ -z "$of" || $(fage "$of") -lt $WINDOW ]] && exit
for x in $(ls -rt) # Order by ascending file mtime
do if [[ $(fage "$x") -ge $WINDOW ]]
then y=$(basename $x .lz) # lzip compression is optional
[[ "$y" != "$x" ]] && /usr/local/bin/lzip -dkq "$x"
$ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus '/ as sysdba' > /dev/null 2>&1 <<-EOF
recover standby database;
$LOG_DEST/$y
cancel
quit
EOF
[[ "$y" != "$x" ]] && rm "$y"
mv "$x" $OLDLOG_DEST
fi
done
) 9> ~oracle/.recovering-$ORACLE_SID
I've covered these specific examples here because they introduce tools to control
concurrency, which is a common issue when using inotify, and they advance a few features that
increase reliability and minimize storage requirements. Hopefully enthusiastic readers will
introduce many improvements to these approaches.
The incron System
Lukas Jelinek is the author of the incron package that allows users to specify tables of
inotify events that are executed by the master incrond process. Despite the reference to
"cron", the package does not schedule events at regular intervals -- it is a tool for
filesystem events, and the cron reference is slightly misleading.
The incron package is available from EPEL . If you have installed the repository,
you can load it with yum:
# yum install incron
Loaded plugins: langpacks, ulninfo
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package incron.x86_64 0:0.5.10-8.el7 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Dependencies Resolved
=================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=================================================================
Installing:
incron x86_64 0.5.10-8.el7 epel 92 k
Transaction Summary
==================================================================
Install 1 Package
Total download size: 92 k
Installed size: 249 k
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
incron-0.5.10-8.el7.x86_64.rpm | 92 kB 00:01
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
Installing : incron-0.5.10-8.el7.x86_64 1/1
Verifying : incron-0.5.10-8.el7.x86_64 1/1
Installed:
incron.x86_64 0:0.5.10-8.el7
Complete!
On a systemd distribution with the appropriate service units, you can start and enable
incron at boot with the following commands:
# systemctl start incrond
# systemctl enable incrond
Created symlink from
/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/incrond.service
to /usr/lib/systemd/system/incrond.service.
In the default configuration, any user can establish incron schedules. The incrontab format
uses three fields:
<path> <mask> <command>
Below is an example entry that was set with the -e option:
While the IN_CLOSE_WRITE event on a directory object is usually of greatest
interest, most of the standard inotify events are available within incron, which also offers
several unique amalgams:
$ man 5 incrontab | col -b | sed -n '/EVENT SYMBOLS/,/child process/p'
EVENT SYMBOLS
These basic event mask symbols are defined:
IN_ACCESS File was accessed (read) (*)
IN_ATTRIB Metadata changed (permissions, timestamps, extended
attributes, etc.) (*)
IN_CLOSE_WRITE File opened for writing was closed (*)
IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE File not opened for writing was closed (*)
IN_CREATE File/directory created in watched directory (*)
IN_DELETE File/directory deleted from watched directory (*)
IN_DELETE_SELF Watched file/directory was itself deleted
IN_MODIFY File was modified (*)
IN_MOVE_SELF Watched file/directory was itself moved
IN_MOVED_FROM File moved out of watched directory (*)
IN_MOVED_TO File moved into watched directory (*)
IN_OPEN File was opened (*)
When monitoring a directory, the events marked with an asterisk (*)
above can occur for files in the directory, in which case the name
field in the returned event data identifies the name of the file within
the directory.
The IN_ALL_EVENTS symbol is defined as a bit mask of all of the above
events. Two additional convenience symbols are IN_MOVE, which is a com-
bination of IN_MOVED_FROM and IN_MOVED_TO, and IN_CLOSE, which combines
IN_CLOSE_WRITE and IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE.
The following further symbols can be specified in the mask:
IN_DONT_FOLLOW Don't dereference pathname if it is a symbolic link
IN_ONESHOT Monitor pathname for only one event
IN_ONLYDIR Only watch pathname if it is a directory
Additionally, there is a symbol which doesn't appear in the inotify sym-
bol set. It is IN_NO_LOOP. This symbol disables monitoring events until
the current one is completely handled (until its child process exits).
The incron system likely presents the most comprehensive interface to inotify of all the
tools researched and listed here. Additional configuration options can be set in
/etc/incron.conf to tweak incron's behavior for those that require a non-standard
configuration.
Path Units under systemd
When your Linux installation is running systemd as PID 1, limited inotify functionality is
available through "path units" as is discussed in a lighthearted article by Paul Brown
at OCS-Mag .
The relevant manual page has useful information on the subject:
$ man systemd.path | col -b | sed -n '/Internally,/,/systems./p'
Internally, path units use the inotify(7) API to monitor file systems.
Due to that, it suffers by the same limitations as inotify, and for
example cannot be used to monitor files or directories changed by other
machines on remote NFS file systems.
Note that when a systemd path unit spawns a shell script, the $HOME and tilde (
~ ) operator for the owner's home directory may not be defined. Using the tilde
operator to reference another user's home directory (for example, ~nobody/) does work, even
when applied to the self-same user running the script. The Oracle script above was explicit and
did not reference ~ without specifying the target user, so I'm using it as an example here.
Using inotify triggers with systemd path units requires two files. The first file specifies
the filesystem location of interest:
The PathChanged parameter above roughly corresponds to the
close-write event used in my previous direct inotify calls. The full collection of
inotify events is not (currently) supported by systemd -- it is limited to
PathExists , PathChanged and PathModified , which are
described in man systemd.path .
The second file is a service unit describing a program to be executed. It must have the same
name, but a different extension, as the path unit:
The oneshot parameter above alerts systemd that the program that it forks is
expected to exit and should not be respawned automatically -- the restarts are limited to
triggers from the path unit. The above service configuration will provide the best options for
logging -- divert them to /dev/null if they are not needed.
Use systemctl start on the path unit to begin monitoring -- a common error is
using it on the service unit, which will directly run the handler only once. Enable the path
unit if the monitoring should survive a reboot.
Although this limited functionality may be enough for some casual uses of inotify, it is a
shame that the full functionality of inotifywait and incron are not represented here. Perhaps
it will come in time.
Conclusion
Although the inotify tools are powerful, they do have limitations. To repeat them, inotify
cannot monitor remote (NFS) filesystems; it cannot report the userid involved in a triggering
event; it does not work with /proc or other pseudo-filesystems; mmap() operations do not
trigger it; and the inotify queue can overflow resulting in lost events, among other
concerns.
Even with these weaknesses, the efficiency of inotify is superior to most other approaches
for immediate notifications of filesystem activity. It also is quite flexible, and although the
close-write directory trigger should suffice for most usage, it has ample tools for covering
special use cases.
In any event, it is productive to replace polling activity with inotify watches, and system
administrators should be liberal in educating the user community that the classic crontab is
not an appropriate place to check for new files. Recalcitrant users should be confined to
Ultrix on a VAX until they develop sufficient appreciation for modern tools and approaches,
which should result in more efficient Linux systems and happier administrators.
Sidenote:
Archiving /etc/passwd
Tracking changes to the password file involves many different types of inotify triggering
events. The vipw utility commonly will make changes to a temporary file, then
clobber the original with it. This can be seen when the inode number changes:
# ll -i /etc/passwd
199720973 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3928 Jul 7 12:24 /etc/passwd
# vipw
[ make changes ]
You are using shadow passwords on this system.
Would you like to edit /etc/shadow now [y/n]? n
# ll -i /etc/passwd
203784208 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3956 Jul 7 12:24 /etc/passwd
The destruction and replacement of /etc/passwd even occurs with setuid binaries called by
unprivileged users:
For this reason, all inotify triggering events should be considered when tracking this file.
If there is concern with an inotify queue overflow (in which events are lost), then the
OPEN , ACCESS and CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE triggers likely
can be immediately ignored.
All other inotify events on /etc/passwd might run the following script to version the
changes into an RCS archive and mail them to an administrator:
#!/bin/sh
# This script tracks changes to the /etc/passwd file from inotify.
# Uses RCS for archiving. Watch for UID zero.
PWMAILS=Charlie.Root@openbsd.org
TPDIR=~/track_passwd
cd $TPDIR
if diff -q /etc/passwd $TPDIR/passwd
then exit # they are the same
else sleep 5 # let passwd settle
diff /etc/passwd $TPDIR/passwd 2>&1 | # they are DIFFERENT
mail -s "/etc/passwd changes $(hostname -s)" "$PWMAILS"
cp -f /etc/passwd $TPDIR # copy for checkin
# "SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!"
# -- Ken Thompson
rcs -q -l passwd # lock the archive
ci -q -m_ passwd # check in new ver
co -q passwd # drop the new copy
fi > /dev/null 2>&1
Here is an example email from the script for the above chfn operation:
-----Original Message-----
From: root [mailto:root@myhost.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2017 2:35 PM
To: Fisher, Charles J. <Charles.Fisher@myhost.com>;
Subject: /etc/passwd changes myhost
57c57
< fishecj:x:123:456:Fisher, Charles J.:/home/fishecj:/bin/bash
---
> fishecj:x:123:456:Fisher, Charles J.:/home/fishecj:/bin/csh
Further processing on the third column of /etc/passwd might detect UID zero (a root user) or
other important user classes for emergency action. This might include a rollback of the file
from RCS to /etc and/or SMS messages to security contacts. ______________________
Charles Fisher has an electrical engineering degree from the University of Iowa and works as
a systems and database administrator for a Fortune 500 mining and manufacturing
corporation.
BASH Shell: How To Redirect stderr To stdout ( redirect stderr to a File ) Posted on
March 12,
2008 March 12, 2008 in Categories BASH Shell , Linux , UNIX last updated March 12, 2008 Q. How do I
redirect stderr to stdout? How do I redirect stderr to a file?
A. Bash and other modern shell provides I/O redirection facility. There are 3 default
standard files (standard streams) open:
[a] stdin – Use to get input (keyboard) i.e. data going into a program.
[b] stdout – Use to write information (screen)
[c] stderr – Use to write error message (screen)
Understanding I/O streams
numbers
The Unix / Linux standard I/O streams with numbers:
Handle
Name
Description
0
stdin
Standard input
1
stdout
Standard output
2
stderr
Standard error
Redirecting the standard error stream to a file
The following will redirect program error message to a file called error.log: $ program-name 2> error.log
$ command1 2> error.log
Redirecting the standard error (stderr) and stdout to
file
Use the following syntax: $ command-name &>file
OR $ command > file-name 2>&1
Another useful example: # find /usr/home -name .profile 2>&1 | more
A more flexible method for defining custom commands for an interactive shell (or within a script)
is to use a shell function. We could declare our ll function in a Bash startup file
as a function instead of an alias like so:
# Shortcut to call ls(1) with the -l flag
ll() {
command ls -l "$@"
}
Note the use of the command builtin here to specify that the ll function
should invoke the program named ls , and not any function named
ls . This is particularly important when writing a function wrapper around a command,
to stop an infinite loop where the function calls itself indefinitely:
# Always add -q to invocations of gdb(1)
gdb() {
command gdb -q "$@"
}
In both examples, note also the use of the "$@" expansion, to add to the final command
line any arguments given to the function. We wrap it in double quotes to stop spaces and other shell
metacharacters in the arguments causing problems. This means that the ll command will
work correctly if you were to pass it further options and/or one or more directories as arguments:
$ ll -a
$ ll ~/.config
Shell functions declared in this way are specified by POSIX for Bourne-style shells, so they should
work in your shell of choice, including Bash, dash , Korn shell, and Zsh. They can also
be used within scripts, allowing you to abstract away multiple instances of similar commands to improve
the clarity of your script, in much the same way the basics of functions work in general-purpose
programming languages.
Functions are a good and portable way to approach adding features to your interactive shell; written
carefully, they even allow you to port features you might like from other shells into your shell
of choice. I'm fond of taking commands I like from Korn shell or Zsh and implementing them in Bash
or POSIX shell functions, such as Zsh's
vared or its
two-argument
cd features.
If you end up writing a lot of shell functions, you should consider putting them into
separate configuration
subfiles to keep your shell's primary startup file from becoming unmanageably large.
Examples from the author
You can take a look at some of the shell functions I have defined here that are useful to me in
general shell usage; a lot of these amount to implementing convenience features that I wish my shell
had, especially for quick directory navigation, or adding options to commands:
You can manipulate variables within shell functions, too:
# Print the filename of a path, stripping off its leading path and
# extension
fn() {
name=$1
name=${name##*/}
name=${name%.*}
printf '%s\n' "$name"
}
This works fine, but the catch is that after the function is done, the value for name
will still be defined in the shell, and will overwrite whatever was in there previously:
This may be desirable if you actually want the function to change some aspect of your current
shell session, such as managing variables or changing the working directory. If you don't
want that, you will probably want to find some means of avoiding name collisions in your variables.
If your function is only for use with a shell that provides the local (Bash) or
typeset (Ksh) features, you can declare the variable as local to the function to remove
its global scope, to prevent this happening:
# Bash-like
fn() {
local name
name=$1
name=${name##*/}
name=${name%.*}
printf '%s\n' "$name"
}
# Ksh-like
# Note different syntax for first line
function fn {
typeset name
name=$1
name=${name##*/}
name=${name%.*}
printf '%s\n' "$name"
}
If you're using a shell that lacks these features, or you want to aim for POSIX compatibility,
things are a little trickier, since local function variables aren't specified by the standard. One
option is to use a subshell , so
that the variables are only defined for the duration of the function:
# POSIX; note we're using plain parentheses rather than curly brackets, for
# a subshell
fn() (
name=$1
name=${name##*/}
name=${name%.*}
printf '%s\n' "$name"
)
# POSIX; alternative approach using command substitution:
fn() {
printf '%s\n' "$(
name=$1
name=${name##*/}
name=${name%.*}
printf %s "$name"
)"
}
This subshell method also allows you to change directory with cd within a function
without changing the working directory of the user's interactive shell, or to change shell options
with set or Bash options with shopt only temporarily for the purposes of
the function.
Another method to deal with variables is to manipulate the
positional parameters directly ( $1 , $2 ) with set ,
since they are local to the function call too:
# POSIX; using positional parameters
fn() {
set -- "${1##*/}"
set -- "${1%.*}"
printf '%s\n' "$1"
}
These methods work well, and can sometimes even be combined, but they're awkward to write, and
harder to read than the modern shell versions. If you only need your functions to work with your
modern shell, I recommend just using local or typeset . The Bash Guide
on Greg's Wiki has a
very thorough
breakdown of functions in Bash, if you want to read about this and other aspects of functions
in more detail.
Keeping functions for later
As you get comfortable with defining and using functions during an interactive session, you might
define them in ad-hoc ways on the command line for calling in a loop or some other similar circumstance,
just to solve a task in that moment.
As an example, I recently made an ad-hoc function called monit to run a set of commands
for its hostname argument that together established different types of monitoring system checks,
using an existing script called nmfs :
$ monit() { nmfs "$1" Ping Y ; nmfs "$1" HTTP Y ; nmfs "$1" SNMP Y ; }
$ for host in webhost{1..10} ; do
> monit "$host"
> done
After that task was done, I realized I was likely to use the monit command interactively
again, so I decided to keep it. Shell functions only last as long as the current shell, so if you
want to make them permanent, you need to store their definitions somewhere in your startup files.
If you're using Bash, and you're content to just add things to the end of your ~/.bashrc
file, you could just do something like this:
$ declare -f monit >> ~/.bashrc
That would append the existing definition of monit in parseable form to your
~/.bashrc file, and the monit function would then be loaded and available
to you for future interactive sessions. Later on, I ended up converting monit into a
shell script, as its use wasn't limited to just an interactive shell.
If you want a more robust approach to keeping functions like this for Bash permanently, I wrote
a tool called Bashkeep , which allows you to quickly store functions and variables defined in
your current shell into separate and appropriately-named files, including viewing and managing the
list of names conveniently:
For tools
like diff that work with multiple files as parameters, it can be useful to work
with not just files on the filesystem, but also potentially with the output of arbitrary
commands. Say, for example, you wanted to compare the output of ps and ps
-e with diff -u . An obvious way to do this is to write files to compare
the output:
This works just fine, but Bash provides a shortcut in the form of process
substitution , allowing you to treat the standard output of commands as files. This is
done with the <() and >() operators. In our case, we want to
direct the standard output of two commands into place as files:
$ diff -u <(ps) <(ps -e)
This is functionally equivalent, except it's a little tidier because it doesn't leave files
lying around. This is also very handy for elegantly comparing files across servers, using
ssh :
$ diff -u .bashrc <(ssh remote cat .bashrc)
Conversely, you can also use the >() operator to direct from a filename
context to the standard input of a command. This is handy for setting up in-place
filters for things like logs. In the following example, I'm making a call to rsync
, specifying that it should make a log of its actions in log.txt , but filter it
through grep -vF .tmp first to remove anything matching the fixed string
.tmp :
Combined with tee this syntax is a way of simulating multiple filters for a
stdout stream, transforming output from a command in as many ways as you see
fit:
In general, the idea is that wherever on the command line you could specify a file to be
read from or written to, you can instead use this syntax to make an implicit named pipe for the
text stream.
Thanks to Reddit user Rhomboid for pointing out an incorrect assertion about this syntax
necessarily abstractingmkfifocalls, which I've since removed.
With judicious use of tricks like pipes, redirects, and process substitution in modern shells, it's
very often possible to avoid using temporary files, doing everything inline and keeping them quite
neat. However when manipulating a lot of data into various formats you do find yourself occasionally
needing a temporary file, just to hold data temporarily.
A common way to deal with this is to create a temporary file in your home directory, with some
arbitrary name, something like test or working :
$ ps -ef >~/test
If you want to save the information indefinitely for later use, this makes sense, although it
would be better to give it a slightly more instructive name than just test .
If you really only needed the data temporarily, however, you're much better to use the temporary
files directory. This is usually /tmp , but for good practice's sake it's better to
check the value of TMPDIR first, and only use /tmp as a default:
$ ps -ef >"${TMPDIR:-/tmp}"/test
This is getting better, but there is still a significant problem: there's no built-in check that
the test file doesn't already exist, perhaps being used by some other user or program,
particularly another running instance of the same script.
To that end, we have the mktemp
program, which creates an empty temporary file in the appropriate directory for you without overwriting
anything, and prints the filename it created. This allows you to use the file inline in both shell
scripts and one-liners, and is much safer than specifying hardcoded paths:
On GNU/Linux systems, files of a sufficient age in TMPDIR are cleared on boot (controlled
in /etc/default/rcS on Debian-derived systems, /etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch
on Red Hat ones), making /tmp useful as a general scratchpad as well as for a kind of
relatively reliable inter-process communication without cluttering up users' home directories.
In some cases, there may be additional advantages in using /tmp for its designed
purpose as some administrators choose to mount it as a tmpfs filesystem, so it operates
in RAM and works very quickly. It's also common practice to set the noexec flag on the
mount to prevent malicious users from executing any code they manage to find or save in the directory.
"... One of my favourite technical presentations I've read online has been Hal Pomeranz's Unix Command-Line Kung Fu , a catalogue of shortcuts and efficient methods of doing very clever things with the Bash shell. None of these are grand arcane secrets, but they're things that are often forgotten in the course of daily admin work, when you find yourself typing something you needn't, or pressing up repeatedly to find something you wrote for which you could simply search your command history. ..."
One of my favourite
technical presentations I've read online has been Hal Pomeranz's Unix Command-Line Kung
Fu , a catalogue of shortcuts and efficient methods of doing very clever things with the
Bash shell. None of these are grand arcane secrets, but they're things that are often forgotten
in the course of daily admin work, when you find yourself typing something you needn't, or
pressing up repeatedly to find something you wrote for which you could simply search your
command history.
I highly recommend reading the whole thing, as I think even the most experienced shell users
will find there are useful tidbits in there that would make their lives easier and their time
with the shell more productive, beyond simpler things like tab completion.
Here, I'll recap two
of the things I thought were the most simple and useful items in the presentation for general
shell usage, and see if I can add a little value to them with reference to the Bash
manual.
History with Ctrl+R
For many shell users, finding a command in history means either pressing the up arrow key
repeatedly, or perhaps piping a history call through grep . It turns
out there's a much nicer way to do this, using Bash's built-in history searching functionality;
if you press Ctrl+R and start typing a search pattern, the most recent command matching that
pattern will automatically be inserted on your current line, at which point you can adapt it as
you need, or simply press Enter to run it again. You can keep pressing Ctrl+R to move further
back in your history to the next-most recent match. On my shell, if I search through my history
for git , I can pull up what I typed for a previous commit:
This functionality isn't actually exclusive to Bash; you can establish a history search
function in quite a few tools that use GNU Readline, including the MySQL client command
line.
You can search forward through history in the same way with Ctrl+S, but it's likely you'll
have to fix up a couple of terminal annoyances first.
Additionally, if like me you're a Vim user and you don't really like having to reach for the
arrow keys, or if you're on a terminal where those keys are broken for whatever reason, you can
browse back and forth within your command history with Ctrl+P (previous) and Ctrl+N (next).
These are just a few of the Emacs-style shortcuts that GNU Readline provides; check here for a more complete
list .
Repeating commands with !!
The last command you ran in Bash can be abbreviated on the next line with two exclamation
marks:
$ echo "Testing."
Testing.
$ !!
Testing.
You can use this to simply repeat a command over and over again, although for that you
really should be using watch , but more interestingly it turns out
this is very handy for building complex pipes in stages. Suppose you were building a pipeline
to digest some data generated from a program like netstat , perhaps to determine
the top 10 IP addresses that are holding open the most connections to a server. You might be
able to build a pipeline like this:
Similarly, you can repeat the last argument from the previous command line using
!$ , which is useful if you're doing a set of operations on one file, such as
checking it out via RCS, editing it, and checking it back in:
$ co -l file.txt
$ vim !$
$ ci -u !$
Or if you happen to want to work on a set of arguments, you can repeat all of the
arguments from the previous command using !* :
$ touch a.txt b.txt c.txt
$ rm !*
When you remember to user these three together, they can save you a lot of typing, and will
really increase your accuracy because you won't be at risk of mistyping any of the commands or
arguments. Naturally, however, it pays to be careful what you're running through
rm !
When you have some
spare time, something instructive to do that can help fill gaps in your Unix knowledge and to
get a better idea of the programs installed on your system and what they can do is a simple
whatis call, run
over all the executable files in your /bin and /usr/bin directories.
This will give you a one-line summary of the file's function if available from man pages.
tom@conan:/bin$ whatis *
bash (1) - GNU Bourne-Again SHell
bunzip2 (1) - a block-sorting file compressor, v1.0.4
busybox (1) - The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux
bzcat (1) - decompresses files to stdout
...
tom@conan:/usr/bin$ whatis *
[ (1) - check file types and compare values
2to3 (1) - Python2 to Python3 converter
2to3-2.7 (1) - Python2 to Python3 converter
411toppm (1) - convert Sony Mavica .411 image to ppm
...
It also works on many of the files in other directories, such as /etc :
tom@conan:/etc$ whatis *
acpi (1) - Shows battery status and other ACPI information
adduser.conf (5) - configuration file for adduser(8) and addgroup(8)
adjtime (3) - correct the time to synchronize the system clock
aliases (5) - Postfix local alias database format
...
Because packages often install more than one binary and you're only in the habit of using
one or two of them, this process can tell you about programs on your system that you may have
missed, particularly standard tools that solve common problems. As an example, I first learned
about watch this
way, having used a clunky solution with for loops with sleep calls to
do the same thing many times before.
In Bash
scripting (and shell scripting in general), we often want to check the exit value of a command
to decide an action to take after it completes, likely for the purpose of error handling. For
example, to determine whether a particular regular expression regex was present
somewhere in a file options , we might apply grep(1) with its POSIX
-q option to suppress output and just use the exit value:
grep -q regex options
An approach sometimes taken is then to test the exit value with the $?
parameter, using if to check if it's non-zero, which is not very elegant and a bit
hard to read:
# Bad practice
grep -q regex options
if (($? > 0)); then
printf '%s\n' 'myscript: Pattern not found!' >&2
exit 1
fi
Because the if construct by design
tests the exit value of commands , it's better to test the command directly ,
making the expansion of $? unnecessary:
# Better
if grep -q regex options; then
# Do nothing
:
else
printf '%s\n' 'myscript: Pattern not found!\n' >&2
exit 1
fi
We can precede the command to be tested with ! to negate the test as
well, to prevent us having to use else as well:
# Best
if ! grep -q regex options; then
printf '%s\n' 'myscript: Pattern not found!' >&2
exit 1
fi
An alternative syntax is to use && and || to perform
if and else tests with grouped commands between braces, but these
tend to be harder to read:
# Alternative
grep -q regex options || {
printf '%s\n' 'myscript: Pattern not found!' >&2
exit 1
}
With this syntax, the two commands in the block are only executed if the
grep(1) call exits with a non-zero status. We can apply &&
instead to execute commands if it does exit with zero.
That syntax can be convenient for quickly short-circuiting failures in scripts, for example
due to nonexistent commands, particularly if the command being tested already outputs its own
error message. This therefore cuts the script off if the given command fails, likely due to
ffmpeg(1) being unavailable on the system:
hash ffmpeg || exit 1
Note that the braces for a grouped command are not needed here, as there's only one command
to be run in case of failure, the exit call.
Calls to cd are another good use case here, as running a script in the wrong
directory if a call to cd fails could have really nasty effects:
cd wherever || exit 1
In general, you'll probably only want to test $? when you have
specific non-zero error conditions to catch. For example, if we were using the
--max-delete option for rsync(1) , we could check a call's return
value to see whether rsync(1) hit the threshold for deleted file count and write a
message to a logfile appropriately:
rsync --archive --delete --max-delete=5 source destination
if (($? == 25)); then
printf '%s\n' 'Deletion limit was reached' >"$logfile"
fi
It may be tempting to use the errexit feature in the hopes of stopping a script
as soon as it encounters any error, but there are some problems with its usage that make it a bit
error-prone. It's generally more straightforward to simply write your own error handling using
the methods above.
For a really thorough breakdown of dealing with conditionals in Bash, take a look at the
relevant chapter of the Bash Guide .
"... Note that we unset the config variable after we're done, otherwise it'll be in the namespace of our shell where we don't need it. You may also wish to check for the existence of the ~/.bashrc.d directory, check there's at least one matching file inside it, or check that the file is readable before attempting to source it, depending on your preference. ..."
"... Thanks to commenter oylenshpeegul for correcting the syntax of the loops. ..."
Large shell startup scripts ( .bashrc , .profile ) over about fifty
lines or so with a lot of options, aliases, custom functions, and similar tweaks can get cumbersome
to manage over time, and if you keep your dotfiles under version control it's not terribly helpful
to see large sets of commits just editing the one file when it could be more instructive if broken
up into files by section.
Given that shell configuration is just shell code, we can apply the source builtin
(or the . builtin for POSIX sh ) to load several files at the end of a
.bashrc , for example:
This is a better approach, but it still binds us into using those filenames; we still have to
edit the ~/.bashrc file if we want to rename them, or remove them, or add new ones.
Fortunately, UNIX-like systems have a common convention for this, the .d directory
suffix, in which sections of configuration can be stored to be read by a main configuration file
dynamically. In our case, we can create a new directory ~/.bashrc.d :
$ ls ~/.bashrc.d
options.bash
aliases.bash
functions.bash
With a slightly more advanced snippet at the end of ~/.bashrc , we can then load
every file with the suffix .bash in this directory:
# Load any supplementary scripts
for config in "$HOME"/.bashrc.d/*.bash ; do
source "$config"
done
unset -v config
Note that we unset the config variable after we're done, otherwise it'll be in the
namespace of our shell where we don't need it. You may also wish to check for the existence of the
~/.bashrc.d directory, check there's at least one matching file inside it, or check
that the file is readable before attempting to source it, depending on your preference.
The same method can be applied with .profile to load all scripts with the suffix
.sh in ~/.profile.d , if we want to write in POSIX sh , with
some slightly different syntax:
# Load any supplementary scripts
for config in "$HOME"/.profile.d/*.sh ; do
. "$config"
done
unset -v config
Another advantage of this method is that if you have your dotfiles under version control, you
can arrange to add extra snippets on a per-machine basis unversioned, without having to update your
.bashrc file.
Here's my implementation of the above method, for both .bashrc and .profile
:
By default, the
Bash shell keeps the history of your most recent session in the .bash_history
file, and the commands you've issued in your current session are also available with a
history call. These defaults are useful for keeping track of what you've been up
to in the shell on any given machine, but with disks much larger and faster than they were when
Bash was designed, a little tweaking in your .bashrc file can record history more
permanently, consistently, and usefully. Append history instead of rewriting it
You should start by setting the histappend option, which will mean that when
you close a session, your history will be appended to the .bash_history
file rather than overwriting what's in there.
shopt -s histappend
Allow a larger history file
The default maximum number of commands saved into the .bash_history file is a
rather meager 500. If you want to keep history further back than a few weeks or so, you may as
well bump this up by explicitly setting $HISTSIZE to a much larger number in your
.bashrc . We can do the same thing with the $HISTFILESIZE
variable.
HISTFILESIZE=1000000
HISTSIZE=1000000
The man page for Bash says that HISTFILESIZE can be
unset to stop truncation entirely, but unfortunately this doesn't work in
.bashrc files due to the order in which variables are set; it's therefore more
straightforward to simply set it to a very large number.
If you're on a machine with resource constraints, it might be a good idea to occasionally
archive old .bash_history files to speed up login and reduce memory
footprint.
Don't store specific lines
You can prevent commands that start with a space from going into history by setting
$HISTCONTROL to ignorespace . You can also ignore duplicate commands,
for example repeated du calls to watch a file grow, by adding
ignoredups . There's a shorthand to set both in ignoreboth .
HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
You might also want to remove the use of certain commands from your history, whether for
privacy or readability reasons. This can be done with the $HISTIGNORE variable.
It's common to use this to exclude ls calls, job control builtins like
bg and fg , and calls to history itself:
HISTIGNORE='ls:bg:fg:history'
Record timestamps
If you set $HISTTIMEFORMAT to something useful, Bash will record the timestamp
of each command in its history. In this variable you can specify the format in which you want
this timestamp displayed when viewed with history . I find the full date and time
to be useful, because it can be sorted easily and works well with tools like cut
and awk .
HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T '
Use one command per line
To make your .bash_history file a little easier to parse, you can force
commands that you entered on more than one line to be adjusted to fit on only one with the
cmdhist option:
shopt -s cmdhist
Store history immediately
By default, Bash only records a session to the .bash_history file on disk when
the session terminates. This means that if you crash or your session terminates improperly, you
lose the history up to that point. You can fix this by recording each line of history as you
issue it, through the $PROMPT_COMMAND variable:
Setting the Bash
option histexpand allows some convenient typing shortcuts using Bash history
expansion . The option can be set with either of these:
$ set -H
$ set -o histexpand
It's likely that this option is already set for all interactive shells, as it's on by
default. The manual, man bash , describes these features as follows:
-H Enable ! style history substitution. This option is on
by default when the shell is interactive.
You may have come across this before, perhaps to your annoyance, in the following error
message that comes up whenever ! is used in a double-quoted string, or without
being escaped with a backslash:
$ echo "Hi, this is Tom!"
bash: !": event not found
If you don't want the feature and thereby make ! into a normal character, it
can be disabled with either of these:
$ set +H
$ set +o histexpand
History expansion is actually a very old feature of shells, having been available in
csh before Bash usage became common.
This article is a good followup to Better Bash history , which among
other things explains how to include dates and times in history output, as these
examples do.
Basic history expansion
Perhaps the best known and most useful of these expansions is using !! to refer
to the previous command. This allows repeating commands quickly, perhaps to monitor the
progress of a long process, such as disk space being freed while deleting a large file:
$ rm big_file &
[1] 23608
$ du -sh .
3.9G .
$ !!
du -sh .
3.3G .
It can also be useful to specify the full filesystem path to programs that aren't in your
$PATH :
$ hdparm
-bash: hdparm: command not found
$ /sbin/!!
/sbin/hdparm
In each case, note that the command itself is printed as expanded, and then run to print the
output on the following line.
History by absolute index
However, !! is actually a specific example of a more general form of history
expansion. For example, you can supply the history item number of a specific command to repeat
it, after looking it up with history :
$ history | grep expand
3951 2012-08-16 15:58:53 set -o histexpand
$ !3951
set -o histexpand
You needn't enter the !3951 on a line by itself; it can be included as any part
of the command, for example to add a prefix like sudo :
$ sudo !3850
If you include the escape string \! as part of your Bash prompt , you can include the current
command number in the prompt before the command, making repeating commands by index a lot
easier as long as they're still visible on the screen.
History by relative index
It's also possible to refer to commands relative to the current command. To
subtitute the second-to-last command, we can type !-2 . For example, to check
whether truncating a file with sed worked correctly:
<img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d098097d2a43d2fc1f0d31327f8288a6?s=90&d=mm&r=g' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d098097d2a43d2fc1f0d31327f8288a6?s=180&d=mm&r=g 2x' class='avatar avatar-90 photo' height='90' width='90' />
<img
src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/02-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="set u option at
command line" width=1200 height=254 /> Setting 
<img
src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/03-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from addpath
script" width=1200 height=417 /> Using 
<img
src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/04-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from count.sh
script" width=1200 height=291 /> Using 
<img
src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/05-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from addpath
script" width=1200 height=469 /> Wrapping options around a block of code in your script
<img
src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/06-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from -f option"
width=1200 height=314 /> Using 
<img
src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/07-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from using trap
EXIT" width=1200 height=469 /> Using trap 
<img
src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/08-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from using trap
DEBUG" width=1200 height=469 /> Using trap 
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1 r/commandline • Posted by u/acksed 6 years ago
<img src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/02-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="set u option at command line" width=1200 height=254 /> Setting
<img src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/03-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from addpath script" width=1200 height=417 /> Using
<img src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/04-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from count.sh script" width=1200 height=291 /> Using
<img src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/05-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from addpath script" width=1200 height=469 /> Wrapping options around a block of code in your script
<img src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/06-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from -f option" width=1200 height=314 /> Using
<img src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/07-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from using trap EXIT" width=1200 height=469 /> Using trap
<img src=https://linuxconfig.org/images/08-how-to-debug-bash-scripts.png alt="results from using trap DEBUG" width=1200 height=469 /> Using trap
<a rel='nofollow' target='_blank' href='//rev.linuxquestions.org/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a054b75'><img border='0' alt='' src='//rev.linuxquestions.org/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=10&n=a054b75' /></a>
11-16-2009, 10:10 PM
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28848" src="https://www.tecmint.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/List-Gogo-Aliases.png" alt="List Gogo Aliases" width="664" height="150" />
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28849" src="https://www.tecmint.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Gogo-Listing.png" alt="Running Gogo Without Options" width="661" height="105" />
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-28850" src="https://www.tecmint.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Create-Gogo-Shortcut.png" alt="Create Long Directory Shortcut " width="739" height="270" />
mbadran / gist:130469 Created
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