Unix script - 7 Loop

Most languages have the concept of loops: If we want to repeat a tasktwenty times, we don't want to have to type in the code twenty times, with maybe a slight change each time.
As a result, we have for and while loops in the Bourne shell. This is somewhat fewer features than other languages, but nobody claimed that shell programminghas the power of C.

For Loops

for loops iterate through a set of values until the list is exhausted:

---

for.sh

#!/bin/sh
for i in 1 2 3 4 5
do
  echo "Looping ... number $i"
done

---

Try this code and see what it does.Note that the values can be anything at all:

---

for2.sh

#!/bin/sh
for i in hello 1 * 2 goodbye 
do
  echo "Looping ... i is set to $i"
done

---

is well worth trying. Make sure that you understand what is happeninghere. Try it without the * and grasp the idea, then re-readthe Wildcards section and try it again withthe * in place. Try it also in different directories, and with the * surrounded bydouble quotes, and try it preceded by a backslash (\*)

In case you don't have access to a shell at the moment (it is very usefulto have a shell to hand whilst reading this tutorial), the results of the above two scripts are:

Looping .... number 1
Looping .... number 2
Looping .... number 3
Looping .... number 4
Looping .... number 5

and, for the second example:

Looping ... i is set to hello
Looping ... i is set to 1
Looping ... i is set to (name of first file in current directory)
    ... etc ...
Looping ... i is set to (name of last file in current directory)
Looping ... i is set to 2
Looping ... i is set to goodbye

So, as you can see, for simply loops through whatever input it is given, until it runs out of input.

While Loops

while loops can be much more fun! (depending on your idea of fun, and howoften you get out of the house... )

---

while.sh

#!/bin/sh
INPUT_STRING=hello
while [ "$INPUT_STRING" != "bye" ]
do
  echo "Please type something in (bye to quit)"
  read INPUT_STRING
  echo "You typed: $INPUT_STRING"
done

---

What happens here, is that the echo and read statements will runindefinitely until you type "bye" when prompted.
Review Variables - Part I to see whywe set INPUT_STRING=hello before testing it. This makesit a repeat loop, not a traditional while loop.

The colon (:) always evaluates to true; whilst usingthis can be necessary sometimes, it is often preferrable to use a realexit condition. Compare quitting the above loop with the one below;see which is the more elegant. Also think of some situations in which each one would be more useful than the other:

---

while2.sh

#!/bin/sh
while :
do
  echo "Please type something in (^C to quit)"
  read INPUT_STRING
  echo "You typed: $INPUT_STRING"
done

---

Another useful trick is the while read f loop. This example uses the case statement,which we'll cover later. It reads from the file myfile, and for each line, tells you what language it thinks is being used. Each line must end with a LF (newline) - if cat myfile doesn't end with a blank line, that final line will not be processed.

---

while3a.sh

#!/bin/sh
while read f
do
  case $f in
        hello)          echo English    ;;
        howdy)          echo American   ;;
        gday)           echo Australian ;;
        bonjour)        echo French     ;;
        "guten tag")    echo German     ;;
        *)              echo Unknown Language: $f
                ;;
   esac
done < myfile

---

On many Unix systems, this can be also be done as:

---

while3b.sh

#!/bin/sh
while f=`line`
do
  .. process f ..
done < myfile

---

But since the while read f works with any *nix, and doesn't depend on theexternal program line, the former is preferable. See ExternalPrograms to see why this method uses the backtick (`).
Had I referred to $i (not $f) in the default("Unknown Language") case above - you will get no warnings or errors in this case, even though$i has not been declared or defined. For example:

$ i=THIS_IS_A_BUG
$ export i
$ ./while3.sh something
Unknown Language: THIS_IS_A_BUG
$

So make sure that you avoid typos. This is also another good reason for using ${x}and not just $x - if x="A" and you want to say "A1", you need echo ${x}1, as echo $x1 will try to use the variable x1, whichmay not exist, or may be set to B2.

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I recently found an old thread on Usenet which I had been involved in, whereI actually learned more ... Google has it here..

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A handy Bash (but not Bourne Shell) tip I learned recently from the Linux From Scratchproject is:

mkdir rc{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,S}.d

instead of the more cumbersome:

for runlevel in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 S
do
  mkdir rc${runlevel}.d
done

And this can be done recursively, too:

$ cd /
$ ls -ld {,usr,usr/local}/{bin,sbin,lib}
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Oct 26 01:00 /bin
drwxr-xr-x    6 root     root         4096 Jan 16 17:09 /lib
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Oct 27 00:02 /sbin
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root        40960 Jan 16 19:35 usr/bin
drwxr-xr-x   83 root     root        49152 Jan 16 17:23 usr/lib
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Jan 16 22:22 usr/local/bin
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root         4096 Jan 16 19:17 usr/local/lib
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Dec 28 00:44 usr/local/sbin
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         8192 Dec 27 02:10 usr/sbin

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We will use while loops further in the Testand Case sections.