Fedora36 info bash

File: bash.info, Node: Top, Next: Introduction, Prev: (dir), Up: (dir)

Bash Features

---

This text is a brief description of the features that are present in the
Bash shell (version 5.1, 29 October 2020). The Bash home page is
http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/.

This is Edition 5.1, last updated 29 October 2020, of ‘The GNU Bash
Reference Manual’, for ‘Bash’, Version 5.1.

Bash contains features that appear in other popular shells, and some
features that only appear in Bash. Some of the shells that Bash has
borrowed concepts from are the Bourne Shell (‘sh’), the Korn Shell
(‘ksh’), and the C-shell (‘csh’ and its successor, ‘tcsh’). The
following menu breaks the features up into categories, noting which
features were inspired by other shells and which are specific to Bash.

This manual is meant as a brief introduction to features found in
Bash. The Bash manual page should be used as the definitive reference
on shell behavior.

• Menu:

• Introduction:: An introduction to the shell.

• Definitions:: Some definitions used in the rest of this
  manual.

• Basic Shell Features:: The shell “building blocks”.

• Shell Builtin Commands:: Commands that are a part of the shell.

• Shell Variables:: Variables used or set by Bash.

• Bash Features:: Features found only in Bash.

• Job Control:: What job control is and how Bash allows you
  to use it.

• Command Line Editing:: Chapter describing the command line
  editing features.

• Using History Interactively:: Command History Expansion

• Installing Bash:: How to build and install Bash on your system.

• Reporting Bugs:: How to report bugs in Bash.

• Major Differences From The Bourne Shell:: A terse list of the differences
  between Bash and historical
  versions of /bin/sh.

• GNU Free Documentation License:: Copying and sharing this documentation.

• Indexes:: Various indexes for this manual.

File: bash.info, Node: Introduction, Next: Definitions, Up: Top

1 Introduction

---

• Menu:

• What is Bash?:: A short description of Bash.

• What is a shell?:: A brief introduction to shells.

File: bash.info, Node: What is Bash?, Next: What is a shell?, Up: Introduction

1.1 What is Bash?

Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, for the GNU
operating system. The name is an acronym for the ‘Bourne-Again SHell’,
a pun on Stephen Bourne, the author of the direct ancestor of the
current Unix shell ‘sh’, which appeared in the Seventh Edition Bell Labs
Research version of Unix.

Bash is largely compatible with ‘sh’ and incorporates useful features
from the Korn shell ‘ksh’ and the C shell ‘csh’. It is intended to be a
conformant implementation of the IEEE POSIX Shell and Tools portion of
the IEEE POSIX specification (IEEE Standard 1003.1). It offers
functional improvements over ‘sh’ for both interactive and programming
use.

While the GNU operating system provides other shells, including a
version of ‘csh’, Bash is the default shell. Like other GNU software,
Bash is quite portable. It currently runs on nearly every version of
Unix and a few other operating systems - independently-supported ports
exist for MS-DOS, OS/2, and Windows platforms.

File: bash.info, Node: What is a shell?, Prev: What is Bash?, Up: Introduction

1.2 What is a shell?

At its base, a shell is simply a macro processor that executes commands.
The term macro processor means functionality where text and symbols are
expanded to create larger expressions.

A Unix shell is both a command interpreter and a programming
language. As a command interpreter, the shell provides the user
interface to the rich set of GNU utilities. The programming language
features allow these utilities to be combined. Files containing
commands can be created, and become commands themselves. These new
commands have the same status as system commands in directories such as
‘/bin’, allowing users or groups to establish custom environments to
automate their common tasks.

Shells may be used interactively or non-interactively. In
interactive mode, they accept input typed from the keyboard. When
executing non-interactively, shells execute commands read from a file.

A shell allows execution of GNU commands, both synchronously and
asynchronously. The shell waits for synchronous commands to complete
before accepting more input; asynchronous commands continue to execute
in parallel with the shell while it reads and executes additional
commands. The “redirection” constructs permit fine-grained control of
the input and output of those commands. Moreover, the shell allows
control over the contents of commands’ environments.

Shells also provide a small set of built-in commands (“builtins”)
implementing functionality impossible or inconvenient to obtain via
separate utilities. For example, ‘cd’, ‘break’, ‘continue’, and ‘exec’
cannot be implemented outside of the shell because they directly
manipulate the shell itself. The ‘history’, ‘getopts’, ‘kill’, or ‘pwd’
builtins, among others, could be implemented in separate utilities, but
they are more convenient to use as builtin commands. All of the shell
builtins are described in subsequent sections.

While executing commands is essential, most of the power (and
complexity) of shells is due to their embedded programming languages.
Like any high-level language, the shell provides variables, flow control
constructs, quoting, and functions.

Shells offer features geared specifically for interactive use rather
than to augment the programming language. These interactive features
include job control, command line editing, command history and aliases.
Each of these features is described in this manual.

File: bash.info, Node: Definitions, Next: Basic Shell Features, Prev: Introduction, Up: Top

2 Definitions

---

These definitions are used throughout the remainder of this manual.

‘POSIX’
A family of open system standards based on Unix. Bash is primarily
concerned with the Shell and Utilities portion of the POSIX 1003.1
standard.

‘blank’
A space or tab character.

‘builtin’
A command that is implemented internally by the shell itself,
rather than by an executable program somewhere in the file system.

‘control operator’
A ‘token’ that performs a control function. It is a ‘newline’ or
one of the following: ‘||’, ‘&&’, ‘&’, ‘;’, ‘;;’, ‘;&’, ‘;;&’, ‘|’,
‘|&’, ‘(’, or ‘)’.

‘exit status’
The value returned by a command to its caller. The value is
restricted to eight bits, so the maximum value is 255.

‘field’
A unit of text that is the result of one of the shell expansions.
After expansion, when executing a command, the resulting fields are
used as the command name and arguments.

‘filename’
A string of characters used to identify a file.

‘job’
A set of processes comprising a pipeline, and any processes
descended from it, that are all in the same process group.

‘job control’
A mechanism by which users can selectively stop (suspend) and
restart (resume) execution of processes.

‘metacharacter’
A character that, when unquoted, separates words. A metacharacter
is a ‘space’, ‘tab’, ‘newline’, or one of the following characters:
‘|’, ‘&’, ‘;’, ‘(’, ‘)’, ‘<’, or ‘>’.

‘name’
A ‘word’ consisting solely of letters, numbers, and underscores,
and beginning with a letter or underscore. 'Name’s are used as
shell variable and function names. Also referred to as an
‘identifier’.

‘operator’
A ‘control operator’ or a ‘redirection operator’. *Note
Redirections::, for a list of redirection operators. Operators
contain at least one unquoted ‘metacharacter’.

‘process group’
A collection of related processes each having the same process
group ID.

‘process group ID’
A unique identifier that represents a ‘process group’ during its
lifetime.

‘reserved word’
A ‘word’ that has a special meaning to the shell. Most reserved
words introduce shell flow control constructs, such as ‘for’ and
‘while’.

‘return status’
A synonym for ‘exit status’.

‘signal’
A mechanism by which a process may be notified by the kernel of an
event occurring in the system.

‘special builtin’
A shell builtin command that has been classified as special by the
POSIX standard.

‘token’
A sequence of characters considered a single unit by the shell. It
is either a ‘word’ or an ‘operator’.

‘word’
A sequence of characters treated as a unit by the shell. Words may
not include unquoted ‘metacharacters’.

File: bash.info, Node: Basic Shell Features, Next: Shell Builtin Commands, Prev: Definitions, Up: Top

3 Basic Shell Features

---

Bash is an acronym for ‘Bourne-Again SHell’. The Bourne shell is the
traditional Unix shell originally written by Stephen Bourne. All of the
Bourne shell builtin commands are available in Bash, The rules for
evaluation and quoting are taken from the POSIX specification for the
‘standard’ Unix shell.

This chapter briefly summarizes the shell’s ‘building blocks’:
commands, control structures, shell functions, shell parameters, shell
expansions, redirections, which are a way to direct input and output
from and to named files, and how the shell executes commands.

• Menu:

• Shell Syntax:: What your input means to the shell.

• Shell Commands:: The types of commands you can use.

• Shell Functions:: Grouping commands by name.

• Shell Parameters:: How the shell stores values.

• Shell Expansions:: How Bash expands parameters and the various
  expansions available.

• Redirections:: A way to control where input and output go.

• Executing Commands:: What happens when you run a command.

• Shell Scripts:: Executing files of shell commands.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Syntax, Next: Shell Commands, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.1 Shell Syntax

• Menu:

• Shell Operation:: The basic operation of the shell.

• Quoting:: How to remove the special meaning from characters.

• Comments:: How to specify comments.

When the shell reads input, it proceeds through a sequence of
operations. If the input indicates the beginning of a comment, the
shell ignores the comment symbol (‘#’), and the rest of that line.

Otherwise, roughly speaking, the shell reads its input and divides
the input into words and operators, employing the quoting rules to
select which meanings to assign various words and characters.

The shell then parses these tokens into commands and other
constructs, removes the special meaning of certain words or characters,
expands others, redirects input and output as needed, executes the
specified command, waits for the command’s exit status, and makes that
exit status available for further inspection or processing.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Operation, Next: Quoting, Up: Shell Syntax

3.1.1 Shell Operation

The following is a brief description of the shell’s operation when it
reads and executes a command. Basically, the shell does the following:

1. Reads its input from a file (*note Shell Scripts:😃, from a string
   supplied as an argument to the ‘-c’ invocation option (*note
   Invoking Bash:😃, or from the user’s terminal.

2. Breaks the input into words and operators, obeying the quoting
   rules described in *note Quoting::. These tokens are separated by
   ‘metacharacters’. Alias expansion is performed by this step (*note
   Aliases:😃.

3. Parses the tokens into simple and compound commands (*note Shell
   Commands:😃.

4. Performs the various shell expansions (*note Shell Expansions:😃,
   breaking the expanded tokens into lists of filenames (*note
   Filename Expansion:😃 and commands and arguments.

5. Performs any necessary redirections (*note Redirections:😃 and
   removes the redirection operators and their operands from the
   argument list.

6. Executes the command (*note Executing Commands:😃.

7. Optionally waits for the command to complete and collects its exit
   status (*note Exit Status:😃.

File: bash.info, Node: Quoting, Next: Comments, Prev: Shell Operation, Up: Shell Syntax

3.1.2 Quoting

• Menu:

• Escape Character:: How to remove the special meaning from a single
  character.

• Single Quotes:: How to inhibit all interpretation of a sequence
  of characters.

• Double Quotes:: How to suppress most of the interpretation of a
  sequence of characters.

• ANSI-C Quoting:: How to expand ANSI-C sequences in quoted strings.

• Locale Translation:: How to translate strings into different languages.

Quoting is used to remove the special meaning of certain characters or
words to the shell. Quoting can be used to disable special treatment
for special characters, to prevent reserved words from being recognized
as such, and to prevent parameter expansion.

Each of the shell metacharacters (*note Definitions:😃 has special
meaning to the shell and must be quoted if it is to represent itself.
When the command history expansion facilities are being used (*note
History Interaction:😃, the HISTORY EXPANSION character, usually ‘!’,
must be quoted to prevent history expansion. *Note Bash History
Facilities::, for more details concerning history expansion.

There are three quoting mechanisms: the ESCAPE CHARACTER, single
quotes, and double quotes.

File: bash.info, Node: Escape Character, Next: Single Quotes, Up: Quoting

3.1.2.1 Escape Character
…

A non-quoted backslash ‘’ is the Bash escape character. It preserves
the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception
of ‘newline’. If a ‘\newline’ pair appears, and the backslash itself is
not quoted, the ‘\newline’ is treated as a line continuation (that is,
it is removed from the input stream and effectively ignored).

File: bash.info, Node: Single Quotes, Next: Double Quotes, Prev: Escape Character, Up: Quoting

3.1.2.2 Single Quotes
…

Enclosing characters in single quotes (‘’') preserves the literal value
of each character within the quotes. A single quote may not occur
between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash.

File: bash.info, Node: Double Quotes, Next: ANSI-C Quoting, Prev: Single Quotes, Up: Quoting

3.1.2.3 Double Quotes
…

Enclosing characters in double quotes (‘"’) preserves the literal value
of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of ‘${}^{\prime }{,}^{\prime }{‘}^{\prime }{,}^{\prime }\acute{,}and,whenhistoryexpansionisenabled{,}^{\prime }{!}^{\prime }.WhentheshellisinPOSIXmode(\ast noteBashPOSIXMode::),th{e}^{\prime }{!}^{\prime }hasnospecialmeaningwithindoublequotes,evenwhenhistoryexpansionisenabled.Thecharacter{s}^{\prime }$’ and ‘' retain their special meaning within double quotes (*note Shell Expansions::). The backslash retains its special meaning only when followed by one of the following characters: '$', '’, ‘"’,
‘’, or ‘newline’. Within double quotes, backslashes that are followed
by one of these characters are removed. Backslashes preceding
characters without a special meaning are left unmodified. A double
quote may be quoted within double quotes by preceding it with a
backslash. If enabled, history expansion will be performed unless an
‘!’ appearing in double quotes is escaped using a backslash. The
backslash preceding the ‘!’ is not removed.

The special parameters ‘*’ and ‘@’ have special meaning when in
double quotes (*note Shell Parameter Expansion:😃.

File: bash.info, Node: ANSI-C Quoting, Next: Locale Translation, Prev: Double Quotes, Up: Quoting

3.1.2.4 ANSI-C Quoting
…

Words of the form ‘$‘STRING’’ are treated specially. The word expands
to STRING, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by
the ANSI C standard. Backslash escape sequences, if present, are
decoded as follows:

‘\a’
alert (bell)
‘\b’
backspace
‘\e’
‘\E’
an escape character (not ANSI C)
‘\f’
form feed
‘\n’
newline
‘\r’
carriage return
‘\t’
horizontal tab
‘\v’
vertical tab
‘\’
backslash
‘’’
single quote
‘"’
double quote
‘?’
question mark
‘\NNN’
the eight-bit character whose value is the octal value NNN (one to
three octal digits)
‘\xHH’
the eight-bit character whose value is the hexadecimal value HH
(one or two hex digits)
‘\uHHHH’
the Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the
hexadecimal value HHHH (one to four hex digits)
‘\UHHHHHHHH’
the Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the
hexadecimal value HHHHHHHH (one to eight hex digits)
‘\cX’
a control-X character

The expanded result is single-quoted, as if the dollar sign had not been
present.

File: bash.info, Node: Locale Translation, Prev: ANSI-C Quoting, Up: Quoting

3.1.2.5 Locale-Specific Translation
…

A double-quoted string preceded by a dollar sign (‘$’) will cause the
string to be translated according to the current locale. The GETTEXT
infrastructure performs the message catalog lookup and translation,
using the ‘LC_MESSAGES’ and ‘TEXTDOMAIN’ shell variables, as explained
below. See the gettext documentation for additional details. If the
current locale is ‘C’ or ‘POSIX’, or if there are no translations
available, the dollar sign is ignored. If the string is translated and
replaced, the replacement is double-quoted.

Some systems use the message catalog selected by the ‘LC_MESSAGES’
shell variable. Others create the name of the message catalog from the
value of the ‘TEXTDOMAIN’ shell variable, possibly adding a suffix of
‘.mo’. If you use the ‘TEXTDOMAIN’ variable, you may need to set the
‘TEXTDOMAINDIR’ variable to the location of the message catalog files.
Still others use both variables in this fashion:
‘TEXTDOMAINDIR’/‘LC_MESSAGES’/LC_MESSAGES/‘TEXTDOMAIN’.mo.

File: bash.info, Node: Comments, Prev: Quoting, Up: Shell Syntax

3.1.3 Comments

In a non-interactive shell, or an interactive shell in which the
‘interactive_comments’ option to the ‘shopt’ builtin is enabled (*note
The Shopt Builtin:😃, a word beginning with ‘#’ causes that word and all
remaining characters on that line to be ignored. An interactive shell
without the ‘interactive_comments’ option enabled does not allow
comments. The ‘interactive_comments’ option is on by default in
interactive shells. *Note Interactive Shells::, for a description of
what makes a shell interactive.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Commands, Next: Shell Functions, Prev: Shell Syntax, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.2 Shell Commands

A simple shell command such as ‘echo a b c’ consists of the command
itself followed by arguments, separated by spaces.

More complex shell commands are composed of simple commands arranged
together in a variety of ways: in a pipeline in which the output of one
command becomes the input of a second, in a loop or conditional
construct, or in some other grouping.

• Menu:

• Reserved Words:: Words that have special meaning to the shell.

• Simple Commands:: The most common type of command.

• Pipelines:: Connecting the input and output of several
  commands.

• Lists:: How to execute commands sequentially.

• Compound Commands:: Shell commands for control flow.

• Coprocesses:: Two-way communication between commands.

• GNU Parallel:: Running commands in parallel.

File: bash.info, Node: Reserved Words, Next: Simple Commands, Up: Shell Commands

3.2.1 Reserved Words

Reserved words are words that have special meaning to the shell. They
are used to begin and end the shell’s compound commands.

The following words are recognized as reserved when unquoted and the
first word of a command (see below for exceptions):

‘if’ ‘then’ ‘elif’ ‘else’ ‘fi’ ‘time’
‘for’ ‘in’ ‘until’ ‘while’ ‘do’ ‘done’
‘case’ ‘esac’ ‘coproc’‘select’‘function’
‘{’ ‘}’ ‘[[’ ‘]]’ ‘!’

‘in’ is recognized as a reserved word if it is the third word of a
‘case’ or ‘select’ command. ‘in’ and ‘do’ are recognized as reserved
words if they are the third word in a ‘for’ command.

File: bash.info, Node: Simple Commands, Next: Pipelines, Prev: Reserved Words, Up: Shell Commands

3.2.2 Simple Commands

A simple command is the kind of command encountered most often. It’s
just a sequence of words separated by 'blank’s, terminated by one of the
shell’s control operators (*note Definitions:😃. The first word
generally specifies a command to be executed, with the rest of the words
being that command’s arguments.

The return status (*note Exit Status:😃 of a simple command is its
exit status as provided by the POSIX 1003.1 ‘waitpid’ function, or 128+N
if the command was terminated by signal N.

File: bash.info, Node: Pipelines, Next: Lists, Prev: Simple Commands, Up: Shell Commands

3.2.3 Pipelines

A ‘pipeline’ is a sequence of one or more commands separated by one of
the control operators ‘|’ or ‘|&’.

The format for a pipeline is
[time [-p]] [!] COMMAND1 [ | or |& COMMAND2 ] …

The output of each command in the pipeline is connected via a pipe to
the input of the next command. That is, each command reads the previous
command’s output. This connection is performed before any redirections
specified by the command.

If ‘|&’ is used, COMMAND1’s standard error, in addition to its
standard output, is connected to COMMAND2’s standard input through the
pipe; it is shorthand for ‘2>&1 |’. This implicit redirection of the
standard error to the standard output is performed after any
redirections specified by the command.

The reserved word ‘time’ causes timing statistics to be printed for
the pipeline once it finishes. The statistics currently consist of
elapsed (wall-clock) time and user and system time consumed by the
command’s execution. The ‘-p’ option changes the output format to that
specified by POSIX. When the shell is in POSIX mode (*note Bash POSIX
Mode:😃, it does not recognize ‘time’ as a reserved word if the next
token begins with a ‘-’. The ‘TIMEFORMAT’ variable may be set to a
format string that specifies how the timing information should be
displayed. *Note Bash Variables::, for a description of the available
formats. The use of ‘time’ as a reserved word permits the timing of
shell builtins, shell functions, and pipelines. An external ‘time’
command cannot time these easily.

When the shell is in POSIX mode (*note Bash POSIX Mode:😃, ‘time’ may
be followed by a newline. In this case, the shell displays the total
user and system time consumed by the shell and its children. The
‘TIMEFORMAT’ variable may be used to specify the format of the time
information.

If the pipeline is not executed asynchronously (*note Lists:😃, the
shell waits for all commands in the pipeline to complete.

Each command in a pipeline is executed in its own subshell, which is
a separate process (*note Command Execution Environment:😃. If the
‘lastpipe’ option is enabled using the ‘shopt’ builtin (*note The Shopt
Builtin:😃, the last element of a pipeline may be run by the shell
process.

The exit status of a pipeline is the exit status of the last command
in the pipeline, unless the ‘pipefail’ option is enabled (*note The Set
Builtin:😃. If ‘pipefail’ is enabled, the pipeline’s return status is
the value of the last (rightmost) command to exit with a non-zero
status, or zero if all commands exit successfully. If the reserved word
‘!’ precedes the pipeline, the exit status is the logical negation of
the exit status as described above. The shell waits for all commands in
the pipeline to terminate before returning a value.

File: bash.info, Node: Lists, Next: Compound Commands, Prev: Pipelines, Up: Shell Commands

3.2.4 Lists of Commands

A ‘list’ is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by one of the
operators ‘;’, ‘&’, ‘&&’, or ‘||’, and optionally terminated by one of
‘;’, ‘&’, or a ‘newline’.

Of these list operators, ‘&&’ and ‘||’ have equal precedence,
followed by ‘;’ and ‘&’, which have equal precedence.

A sequence of one or more newlines may appear in a ‘list’ to delimit
commands, equivalent to a semicolon.

If a command is terminated by the control operator ‘&’, the shell
executes the command asynchronously in a subshell. This is known as
executing the command in the BACKGROUND, and these are referred to as
ASYNCHRONOUS commands. The shell does not wait for the command to
finish, and the return status is 0 (true). When job control is not
active (*note Job Control:😃, the standard input for asynchronous
commands, in the absence of any explicit redirections, is redirected
from ‘/dev/null’.

Commands separated by a ‘;’ are executed sequentially; the shell
waits for each command to terminate in turn. The return status is the
exit status of the last command executed.

AND and OR lists are sequences of one or more pipelines separated by
the control operators ‘&&’ and ‘||’, respectively. AND and OR lists are
executed with left associativity.

An AND list has the form
COMMAND1 && COMMAND2

COMMAND2 is executed if, and only if, COMMAND1 returns an exit status of
zero (success).

An OR list has the form
COMMAND1 || COMMAND2

COMMAND2 is executed if, and only if, COMMAND1 returns a non-zero exit
status.

The return status of AND and OR lists is the exit status of the last
command executed in the list.

File: bash.info, Node: Compound Commands, Next: Coprocesses, Prev: Lists, Up: Shell Commands

3.2.5 Compound Commands

• Menu:

• Looping Constructs:: Shell commands for iterative action.

• Conditional Constructs:: Shell commands for conditional execution.

• Command Grouping:: Ways to group commands.

Compound commands are the shell programming language constructs. Each
construct begins with a reserved word or control operator and is
terminated by a corresponding reserved word or operator. Any
redirections (*note Redirections:😃 associated with a compound command
apply to all commands within that compound command unless explicitly
overridden.

In most cases a list of commands in a compound command’s description
may be separated from the rest of the command by one or more newlines,
and may be followed by a newline in place of a semicolon.

Bash provides looping constructs, conditional commands, and
mechanisms to group commands and execute them as a unit.

File: bash.info, Node: Looping Constructs, Next: Conditional Constructs, Up: Compound Commands

3.2.5.1 Looping Constructs
…

Bash supports the following looping constructs.

Note that wherever a ‘;’ appears in the description of a command’s
syntax, it may be replaced with one or more newlines.

‘until’
The syntax of the ‘until’ command is:

      until TEST-COMMANDS; do CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS; done

 Execute CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS as long as TEST-COMMANDS has an exit
 status which is not zero.  The return status is the exit status of
 the last command executed in CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS, or zero if none
 was executed.

‘while’
The syntax of the ‘while’ command is:

      while TEST-COMMANDS; do CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS; done

 Execute CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS as long as TEST-COMMANDS has an exit
 status of zero.  The return status is the exit status of the last
 command executed in CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS, or zero if none was
 executed.

‘for’
The syntax of the ‘for’ command is:

      for NAME [ [in [WORDS ...] ] ; ] do COMMANDS; done

 Expand WORDS (*note Shell Expansions::), and execute COMMANDS once
 for each member in the resultant list, with NAME bound to the
 current member.  If 'in WORDS' is not present, the 'for' command
 executes the COMMANDS once for each positional parameter that is
 set, as if 'in "$@"' had been specified (*note Special
 Parameters::).

 The return status is the exit status of the last command that
 executes.  If there are no items in the expansion of WORDS, no
 commands are executed, and the return status is zero.

 An alternate form of the 'for' command is also supported:

      for (( EXPR1 ; EXPR2 ; EXPR3 )) ; do COMMANDS ; done

 First, the arithmetic expression EXPR1 is evaluated according to
 the rules described below (*note Shell Arithmetic::).  The
 arithmetic expression EXPR2 is then evaluated repeatedly until it
 evaluates to zero.  Each time EXPR2 evaluates to a non-zero value,
 COMMANDS are executed and the arithmetic expression EXPR3 is
 evaluated.  If any expression is omitted, it behaves as if it
 evaluates to 1.  The return value is the exit status of the last
 command in COMMANDS that is executed, or false if any of the
 expressions is invalid.

The ‘break’ and ‘continue’ builtins (*note Bourne Shell Builtins:😃
may be used to control loop execution.

File: bash.info, Node: Conditional Constructs, Next: Command Grouping, Prev: Looping Constructs, Up: Compound Commands

3.2.5.2 Conditional Constructs
…

‘if’
The syntax of the ‘if’ command is:

      if TEST-COMMANDS; then
        CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS;
      [elif MORE-TEST-COMMANDS; then
        MORE-CONSEQUENTS;]
      [else ALTERNATE-CONSEQUENTS;]
      fi

 The TEST-COMMANDS list is executed, and if its return status is
 zero, the CONSEQUENT-COMMANDS list is executed.  If TEST-COMMANDS
 returns a non-zero status, each 'elif' list is executed in turn,
 and if its exit status is zero, the corresponding MORE-CONSEQUENTS
 is executed and the command completes.  If 'else
 ALTERNATE-CONSEQUENTS' is present, and the final command in the
 final 'if' or 'elif' clause has a non-zero exit status, then
 ALTERNATE-CONSEQUENTS is executed.  The return status is the exit
 status of the last command executed, or zero if no condition tested
 true.

‘case’
The syntax of the ‘case’ command is:

      case WORD in
          [ [(] PATTERN [| PATTERN]...) COMMAND-LIST ;;]...
      esac

 'case' will selectively execute the COMMAND-LIST corresponding to
 the first PATTERN that matches WORD.  The match is performed
 according to the rules described below in *note Pattern Matching::.
 If the 'nocasematch' shell option (see the description of 'shopt'
 in *note The Shopt Builtin::) is enabled, the match is performed
 without regard to the case of alphabetic characters.  The '|' is
 used to separate multiple patterns, and the ')' operator terminates
 a pattern list.  A list of patterns and an associated command-list
 is known as a CLAUSE.

 Each clause must be terminated with ';;', ';&', or ';;&'.  The WORD
 undergoes tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command
 substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal (*note Shell
 Parameter Expansion::) before matching is attempted.  Each PATTERN
 undergoes tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command
 substitution, and arithmetic expansion.

 There may be an arbitrary number of 'case' clauses, each terminated
 by a ';;', ';&', or ';;&'.  The first pattern that matches
 determines the command-list that is executed.  It's a common idiom
 to use '*' as the final pattern to define the default case, since
 that pattern will always match.

 Here is an example using 'case' in a script that could be used to
 describe one interesting feature of an animal:

      echo -n "Enter the name of an animal: "
      read ANIMAL
      echo -n "The $ANIMAL has "
      case $ANIMAL in
        horse | dog | cat) echo -n "four";;
        man | kangaroo ) echo -n "two";;
        *) echo -n "an unknown number of";;
      esac
      echo " legs."


 If the ';;' operator is used, no subsequent matches are attempted
 after the first pattern match.  Using ';&' in place of ';;' causes
 execution to continue with the COMMAND-LIST associated with the
 next clause, if any.  Using ';;&' in place of ';;' causes the shell
 to test the patterns in the next clause, if any, and execute any
 associated COMMAND-LIST on a successful match, continuing the case
 statement execution as if the pattern list had not matched.

 The return status is zero if no PATTERN is matched.  Otherwise, the
 return status is the exit status of the COMMAND-LIST executed.

‘select’

 The 'select' construct allows the easy generation of menus.  It has
 almost the same syntax as the 'for' command:

      select NAME [in WORDS ...]; do COMMANDS; done

 The list of words following 'in' is expanded, generating a list of
 items.  The set of expanded words is printed on the standard error
 output stream, each preceded by a number.  If the 'in WORDS' is
 omitted, the positional parameters are printed, as if 'in "$@"' had
 been specified.  The 'PS3' prompt is then displayed and a line is
 read from the standard input.  If the line consists of a number
 corresponding to one of the displayed words, then the value of NAME
 is set to that word.  If the line is empty, the words and prompt
 are displayed again.  If 'EOF' is read, the 'select' command
 completes.  Any other value read causes NAME to be set to null.
 The line read is saved in the variable 'REPLY'.

 The COMMANDS are executed after each selection until a 'break'
 command is executed, at which point the 'select' command completes.

 Here is an example that allows the user to pick a filename from the
 current directory, and displays the name and index of the file
 selected.

      select fname in *;
      do
      	echo you picked $fname \($REPLY\)
      	break;
      done

‘((…))’
(( EXPRESSION ))

 The arithmetic EXPRESSION is evaluated according to the rules
 described below (*note Shell Arithmetic::).  If the value of the
 expression is non-zero, the return status is 0; otherwise the
 return status is 1.  This is exactly equivalent to
      let "EXPRESSION"
 *Note Bash Builtins::, for a full description of the 'let' builtin.

‘[[…]]’
[[ EXPRESSION ]]

 Return a status of 0 or 1 depending on the evaluation of the
 conditional expression EXPRESSION.  Expressions are composed of the
 primaries described below in *note Bash Conditional Expressions::.
 Word splitting and filename expansion are not performed on the
 words between the '[[' and ']]'; tilde expansion, parameter and
 variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, command substitution,
 process substitution, and quote removal are performed.  Conditional
 operators such as '-f' must be unquoted to be recognized as
 primaries.

 When used with '[[', the '<' and '>' operators sort
 lexicographically using the current locale.

 When the '==' and '!=' operators are used, the string to the right
 of the operator is considered a pattern and matched according to
 the rules described below in *note Pattern Matching::, as if the
 'extglob' shell option were enabled.  The '=' operator is identical
 to '=='.  If the 'nocasematch' shell option (see the description of
 'shopt' in *note The Shopt Builtin::) is enabled, the match is
 performed without regard to the case of alphabetic characters.  The
 return value is 0 if the string matches ('==') or does not match
 ('!=') the pattern, and 1 otherwise.  Any part of the pattern may
 be quoted to force the quoted portion to be matched as a string.

 An additional binary operator, '=~', is available, with the same
 precedence as '==' and '!='.  When it is used, the string to the
 right of the operator is considered a POSIX extended regular
 expression and matched accordingly (using the POSIX 'regcomp' and
 'regexec' interfaces usually described in regex(3)).  The return
 value is 0 if the string matches the pattern, and 1 otherwise.  If
 the regular expression is syntactically incorrect, the conditional
 expression's return value is 2.  If the 'nocasematch' shell option
 (see the description of 'shopt' in *note The Shopt Builtin::) is
 enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of
 alphabetic characters.  Any part of the pattern may be quoted to
 force the quoted portion to be matched as a string.  Bracket
 expressions in regular expressions must be treated carefully, since
 normal quoting characters lose their meanings between brackets.  If
 the pattern is stored in a shell variable, quoting the variable
 expansion forces the entire pattern to be matched as a string.

 The pattern will match if it matches any part of the string.
 Anchor the pattern using the '^' and '$' regular expression
 operators to force it to match the entire string.  The array
 variable 'BASH_REMATCH' records which parts of the string matched
 the pattern.  The element of 'BASH_REMATCH' with index 0 contains
 the portion of the string matching the entire regular expression.
 Substrings matched by parenthesized subexpressions within the
 regular expression are saved in the remaining 'BASH_REMATCH'
 indices.  The element of 'BASH_REMATCH' with index N is the portion
 of the string matching the Nth parenthesized subexpression.

 For example, the following will match a line (stored in the shell
 variable LINE) if there is a sequence of characters anywhere in the
 value consisting of any number, including zero, of characters in
 the 'space' character class, zero or one instances of 'a', then a
 'b':
      [[ $line =~ [[:space:]]*(a)?b ]]

 That means values like 'aab' and ' aaaaaab' will match, as will a
 line containing a 'b' anywhere in its value.

 Storing the regular expression in a shell variable is often a
 useful way to avoid problems with quoting characters that are
 special to the shell.  It is sometimes difficult to specify a
 regular expression literally without using quotes, or to keep track
 of the quoting used by regular expressions while paying attention
 to the shell's quote removal.  Using a shell variable to store the
 pattern decreases these problems.  For example, the following is
 equivalent to the above:
      pattern='[[:space:]]*(a)?b'
      [[ $line =~ $pattern ]]

 If you want to match a character that's special to the regular
 expression grammar, it has to be quoted to remove its special
 meaning.  This means that in the pattern 'xxx.txt', the '.' matches
 any character in the string (its usual regular expression meaning),
 but in the pattern '"xxx.txt"' it can only match a literal '.'.
 Shell programmers should take special care with backslashes, since
 backslashes are used both by the shell and regular expressions to
 remove the special meaning from the following character.  The
 following two sets of commands are _not_ equivalent:
      pattern='\.'

      [[ . =~ $pattern ]]
      [[ . =~ \. ]]

      [[ . =~ "$pattern" ]]
      [[ . =~ '\.' ]]

 The first two matches will succeed, but the second two will not,
 because in the second two the backslash will be part of the pattern
 to be matched.  In the first two examples, the backslash removes
 the special meaning from '.', so the literal '.' matches.  If the
 string in the first examples were anything other than '.', say 'a',
 the pattern would not match, because the quoted '.' in the pattern
 loses its special meaning of matching any single character.

 Expressions may be combined using the following operators, listed
 in decreasing order of precedence:

 '( EXPRESSION )'
      Returns the value of EXPRESSION.  This may be used to override
      the normal precedence of operators.

 '! EXPRESSION'
      True if EXPRESSION is false.

 'EXPRESSION1 && EXPRESSION2'
      True if both EXPRESSION1 and EXPRESSION2 are true.

 'EXPRESSION1 || EXPRESSION2'
      True if either EXPRESSION1 or EXPRESSION2 is true.

 The '&&' and '||' operators do not evaluate EXPRESSION2 if the
 value of EXPRESSION1 is sufficient to determine the return value of
 the entire conditional expression.

File: bash.info, Node: Command Grouping, Prev: Conditional Constructs, Up: Compound Commands

3.2.5.3 Grouping Commands
…

Bash provides two ways to group a list of commands to be executed as a
unit. When commands are grouped, redirections may be applied to the
entire command list. For example, the output of all the commands in the
list may be redirected to a single stream.

‘()’
( LIST )

 Placing a list of commands between parentheses causes a subshell
 environment to be created (*note Command Execution Environment::),
 and each of the commands in LIST to be executed in that subshell.
 Since the LIST is executed in a subshell, variable assignments do
 not remain in effect after the subshell completes.

‘{}’
{ LIST; }

 Placing a list of commands between curly braces causes the list to
 be executed in the current shell context.  No subshell is created.
 The semicolon (or newline) following LIST is required.

In addition to the creation of a subshell, there is a subtle
difference between these two constructs due to historical reasons. The
braces are ‘reserved words’, so they must be separated from the LIST by
'blank’s or other shell metacharacters. The parentheses are
‘operators’, and are recognized as separate tokens by the shell even if
they are not separated from the LIST by whitespace.

The exit status of both of these constructs is the exit status of
LIST.

File: bash.info, Node: Coprocesses, Next: GNU Parallel, Prev: Compound Commands, Up: Shell Commands

3.2.6 Coprocesses

A ‘coprocess’ is a shell command preceded by the ‘coproc’ reserved word.
A coprocess is executed asynchronously in a subshell, as if the command
had been terminated with the ‘&’ control operator, with a two-way pipe
established between the executing shell and the coprocess.

The format for a coprocess is:
coproc [NAME] COMMAND [REDIRECTIONS]

This creates a coprocess named NAME. If NAME is not supplied, the
default name is COPROC. NAME must not be supplied if COMMAND is a
simple command (*note Simple Commands:😃; otherwise, it is interpreted
as the first word of the simple command.

When the coprocess is executed, the shell creates an array variable
(*note Arrays:😃 named ‘NAME’ in the context of the executing shell.
The standard output of COMMAND is connected via a pipe to a file
descriptor in the executing shell, and that file descriptor is assigned
to ‘NAME’[0]. The standard input of COMMAND is connected via a pipe to
a file descriptor in the executing shell, and that file descriptor is
assigned to ‘NAME’[1]. This pipe is established before any redirections
specified by the command (*note Redirections:😃. The file descriptors
can be utilized as arguments to shell commands and redirections using
standard word expansions. Other than those created to execute command
and process substitutions, the file descriptors are not available in
subshells.

The process ID of the shell spawned to execute the coprocess is
available as the value of the variable ‘NAME’_PID. The ‘wait’ builtin
command may be used to wait for the coprocess to terminate.

Since the coprocess is created as an asynchronous command, the
‘coproc’ command always returns success. The return status of a
coprocess is the exit status of COMMAND.

File: bash.info, Node: GNU Parallel, Prev: Coprocesses, Up: Shell Commands

3.2.7 GNU Parallel

There are ways to run commands in parallel that are not built into Bash.
GNU Parallel is a tool to do just that.

GNU Parallel, as its name suggests, can be used to build and run
commands in parallel. You may run the same command with different
arguments, whether they are filenames, usernames, hostnames, or lines
read from files. GNU Parallel provides shorthand references to many of
the most common operations (input lines, various portions of the input
line, different ways to specify the input source, and so on). Parallel
can replace ‘xargs’ or feed commands from its input sources to several
different instances of Bash.

For a complete description, refer to the GNU Parallel documentation.
A few examples should provide a brief introduction to its use.

For example, it is easy to replace ‘xargs’ to gzip all html files in
the current directory and its subdirectories:
find . -type f -name ‘*.html’ -print | parallel gzip
If you need to protect special characters such as newlines in file
names, use find’s ‘-print0’ option and parallel’s ‘-0’ option.

You can use Parallel to move files from the current directory when
the number of files is too large to process with one ‘mv’ invocation:
printf ‘%s\n’ * | parallel mv {} destdir

As you can see, the {} is replaced with each line read from standard
input. While using ‘ls’ will work in most instances, it is not
sufficient to deal with all filenames. ‘printf’ is a shell builtin, and
therefore is not subject to the kernel’s limit on the number of
arguments to a program, so you can use ‘*’ (but see below about the
‘dotglob’ shell option). If you need to accommodate special characters
in filenames, you can use

 printf '%s\0' * | parallel -0 mv {} destdir

as alluded to above.

This will run as many ‘mv’ commands as there are files in the current
directory. You can emulate a parallel ‘xargs’ by adding the ‘-X’
option:
printf ‘%s\0’ * | parallel -0 -X mv {} destdir

(You may have to modify the pattern if you have the ‘dotglob’ option
enabled.)

GNU Parallel can replace certain common idioms that operate on lines
read from a file (in this case, filenames listed one per line):
while IFS= read -r x; do
do-something1 “$x""config-$x”
do-something2 < “$x”
done < file | process-output

with a more compact syntax reminiscent of lambdas:
cat list | parallel “do-something1 {} config-{} ; do-something2 < {}” |
process-output

Parallel provides a built-in mechanism to remove filename extensions,
which lends itself to batch file transformations or renaming:
ls *.gz | parallel -j+0 “zcat {} | bzip2 >{.}.bz2 && rm {}”
This will recompress all files in the current directory with names
ending in .gz using bzip2, running one job per CPU (-j+0) in parallel.
(We use ‘ls’ for brevity here; using ‘find’ as above is more robust in
the face of filenames containing unexpected characters.) Parallel can
take arguments from the command line; the above can also be written as

 parallel "zcat {} | bzip2 >{.}.bz2 && rm {}" ::: *.gz

If a command generates output, you may want to preserve the input
order in the output. For instance, the following command
{
echo foss.org.my ;
echo debian.org ;
echo freenetproject.org ;
} | parallel traceroute
will display as output the traceroute invocation that finishes first.
Adding the ‘-k’ option
{
echo foss.org.my ;
echo debian.org ;
echo freenetproject.org ;
} | parallel -k traceroute
will ensure that the output of ‘traceroute foss.org.my’ is displayed
first.

Finally, Parallel can be used to run a sequence of shell commands in
parallel, similar to ‘cat file | bash’. It is not uncommon to take a
list of filenames, create a series of shell commands to operate on them,
and feed that list of commands to a shell. Parallel can speed this up.
Assuming that ‘file’ contains a list of shell commands, one per line,

 parallel -j 10 < file

will evaluate the commands using the shell (since no explicit command is
supplied as an argument), in blocks of ten shell jobs at a time.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Functions, Next: Shell Parameters, Prev: Shell Commands, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.3 Shell Functions

Shell functions are a way to group commands for later execution using a
single name for the group. They are executed just like a “regular”
command. When the name of a shell function is used as a simple command
name, the list of commands associated with that function name is
executed. Shell functions are executed in the current shell context; no
new process is created to interpret them.

Functions are declared using this syntax:
FNAME () COMPOUND-COMMAND [ REDIRECTIONS ]

or

 function FNAME [()] COMPOUND-COMMAND [ REDIRECTIONS ]

This defines a shell function named FNAME. The reserved word
‘function’ is optional. If the ‘function’ reserved word is supplied,
the parentheses are optional. The BODY of the function is the compound
command COMPOUND-COMMAND (*note Compound Commands:😃. That command is
usually a LIST enclosed between { and }, but may be any compound command
listed above, with one exception: If the ‘function’ reserved word is
used, but the parentheses are not supplied, the braces are required.
COMPOUND-COMMAND is executed whenever FNAME is specified as the name of
a command. When the shell is in POSIX mode (*note Bash POSIX Mode:😃,
FNAME must be a valid shell NAME and may not be the same as one of the
special builtins (*note Special Builtins:😃. In default mode, a
function name can be any unquoted shell word that does not contain ‘$’.
Any redirections (*note Redirections:😃 associated with the shell
function are performed when the function is executed. A function
definition may be deleted using the ‘-f’ option to the ‘unset’ builtin
(*note Bourne Shell Builtins:😃.

The exit status of a function definition is zero unless a syntax
error occurs or a readonly function with the same name already exists.
When executed, the exit status of a function is the exit status of the
last command executed in the body.

Note that for historical reasons, in the most common usage the curly
braces that surround the body of the function must be separated from the
body by 'blank’s or newlines. This is because the braces are reserved
words and are only recognized as such when they are separated from the
command list by whitespace or another shell metacharacter. Also, when
using the braces, the LIST must be terminated by a semicolon, a ‘&’, or
a newline.

When a function is executed, the arguments to the function become the
positional parameters during its execution (*note Positional
Parameters:😃. The special parameter ‘#’ that expands to the number of
positional parameters is updated to reflect the change. Special
parameter ‘0’ is unchanged. The first element of the ‘FUNCNAME’
variable is set to the name of the function while the function is
executing.

All other aspects of the shell execution environment are identical
between a function and its caller with these exceptions: the ‘DEBUG’ and
‘RETURN’ traps are not inherited unless the function has been given the
‘trace’ attribute using the ‘declare’ builtin or the ‘-o functrace’
option has been enabled with the ‘set’ builtin, (in which case all
functions inherit the ‘DEBUG’ and ‘RETURN’ traps), and the ‘ERR’ trap is
not inherited unless the ‘-o errtrace’ shell option has been enabled.
*Note Bourne Shell Builtins::, for the description of the ‘trap’
builtin.

The ‘FUNCNEST’ variable, if set to a numeric value greater than 0,
defines a maximum function nesting level. Function invocations that
exceed the limit cause the entire command to abort.

If the builtin command ‘return’ is executed in a function, the
function completes and execution resumes with the next command after the
function call. Any command associated with the ‘RETURN’ trap is
executed before execution resumes. When a function completes, the
values of the positional parameters and the special parameter ‘#’ are
restored to the values they had prior to the function’s execution. If a
numeric argument is given to ‘return’, that is the function’s return
status; otherwise the function’s return status is the exit status of the
last command executed before the ‘return’.

Variables local to the function may be declared with the ‘local’
builtin. These variables are visible only to the function and the
commands it invokes. This is particularly important when a shell
function calls other functions.

Local variables “shadow” variables with the same name declared at
previous scopes. For instance, a local variable declared in a function
hides a global variable of the same name: references and assignments
refer to the local variable, leaving the global variable unmodified.
When the function returns, the global variable is once again visible.

The shell uses DYNAMIC SCOPING to control a variable’s visibility
within functions. With dynamic scoping, visible variables and their
values are a result of the sequence of function calls that caused
execution to reach the current function. The value of a variable that a
function sees depends on its value within its caller, if any, whether
that caller is the “global” scope or another shell function. This is
also the value that a local variable declaration “shadows”, and the
value that is restored when the function returns.

For example, if a variable VAR is declared as local in function
FUNC1, and FUNC1 calls another function FUNC2, references to VAR made
from within FUNC2 will resolve to the local variable VAR from FUNC1,
shadowing any global variable named VAR.

The following script demonstrates this behavior. When executed, the
script displays

 In func2, var = func1 local

 func1()
 {
     local var='func1 local'
     func2
 }

 func2()
 {
     echo "In func2, var = $var"
 }

 var=global
 func1

The ‘unset’ builtin also acts using the same dynamic scope: if a
variable is local to the current scope, ‘unset’ will unset it; otherwise
the unset will refer to the variable found in any calling scope as
described above. If a variable at the current local scope is unset, it
will remain so until it is reset in that scope or until the function
returns. Once the function returns, any instance of the variable at a
previous scope will become visible. If the unset acts on a variable at
a previous scope, any instance of a variable with that name that had
been shadowed will become visible.

Function names and definitions may be listed with the ‘-f’ option to
the ‘declare’ (‘typeset’) builtin command (*note Bash Builtins:😃. The
‘-F’ option to ‘declare’ or ‘typeset’ will list the function names only
(and optionally the source file and line number, if the ‘extdebug’ shell
option is enabled). Functions may be exported so that subshells
automatically have them defined with the ‘-f’ option to the ‘export’
builtin (*note Bourne Shell Builtins:😃.

Functions may be recursive. The ‘FUNCNEST’ variable may be used to
limit the depth of the function call stack and restrict the number of
function invocations. By default, no limit is placed on the number of
recursive calls.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Parameters, Next: Shell Expansions, Prev: Shell Functions, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.4 Shell Parameters

• Menu:

• Positional Parameters:: The shell’s command-line arguments.

• Special Parameters:: Parameters denoted by special characters.

A PARAMETER is an entity that stores values. It can be a ‘name’, a
number, or one of the special characters listed below. A VARIABLE is a
parameter denoted by a ‘name’. A variable has a VALUE and zero or more
ATTRIBUTES. Attributes are assigned using the ‘declare’ builtin command
(see the description of the ‘declare’ builtin in *note Bash Builtins:😃.

A parameter is set if it has been assigned a value. The null string
is a valid value. Once a variable is set, it may be unset only by using
the ‘unset’ builtin command.

A variable may be assigned to by a statement of the form
NAME=[VALUE]
If VALUE is not given, the variable is assigned the null string. All
VALUEs undergo tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion,
command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal (detailed
below). If the variable has its ‘integer’ attribute set, then VALUE is
evaluated as an arithmetic expression even if the ‘$((...){)}^{\prime }expansionisnotused(\ast noteArithmeticExpansion::).Wordsplittingisnotperformed,withtheexceptiono{f}^{\prime }"$@"’ as explained below. Filename
expansion is not performed. Assignment statements may also appear as
arguments to the ‘alias’, ‘declare’, ‘typeset’, ‘export’, ‘readonly’,
and ‘local’ builtin commands (DECLARATION commands). When in POSIX mode
(*note Bash POSIX Mode:😃, these builtins may appear in a command after
one or more instances of the ‘command’ builtin and retain these
assignment statement properties.

In the context where an assignment statement is assigning a value to
a shell variable or array index (*note Arrays:😃, the ‘+=’ operator can
be used to append to or add to the variable’s previous value. This
includes arguments to builtin commands such as ‘declare’ that accept
assignment statements (DECLARATION commands). When ‘+=’ is applied to a
variable for which the INTEGER attribute has been set, VALUE is
evaluated as an arithmetic expression and added to the variable’s
current value, which is also evaluated. When ‘+=’ is applied to an
array variable using compound assignment (*note Arrays:😃, the
variable’s value is not unset (as it is when using ‘=’), and new values
are appended to the array beginning at one greater than the array’s
maximum index (for indexed arrays), or added as additional key-value
pairs in an associative array. When applied to a string-valued
variable, VALUE is expanded and appended to the variable’s value.

A variable can be assigned the NAMEREF attribute using the ‘-n’
option to the ‘declare’ or ‘local’ builtin commands (*note Bash
Builtins:😃 to create a NAMEREF, or a reference to another variable.
This allows variables to be manipulated indirectly. Whenever the
nameref variable is referenced, assigned to, unset, or has its
attributes modified (other than using or changing the nameref attribute
itself), the operation is actually performed on the variable specified
by the nameref variable’s value. A nameref is commonly used within
shell functions to refer to a variable whose name is passed as an
argument to the function. For instance, if a variable name is passed to
a shell function as its first argument, running
declare -n ref=$1
inside the function creates a nameref variable REF whose value is the
variable name passed as the first argument. References and assignments
to REF, and changes to its attributes, are treated as references,
assignments, and attribute modifications to the variable whose name was
passed as ‘$1’.

If the control variable in a ‘for’ loop has the nameref attribute,
the list of words can be a list of shell variables, and a name reference
will be established for each word in the list, in turn, when the loop is
executed. Array variables cannot be given the nameref attribute.
However, nameref variables can reference array variables and subscripted
array variables. Namerefs can be unset using the ‘-n’ option to the
‘unset’ builtin (*note Bourne Shell Builtins:😃. Otherwise, if ‘unset’
is executed with the name of a nameref variable as an argument, the
variable referenced by the nameref variable will be unset.

File: bash.info, Node: Positional Parameters, Next: Special Parameters, Up: Shell Parameters

3.4.1 Positional Parameters

A POSITIONAL PARAMETER is a parameter denoted by one or more digits,
other than the single digit ‘0’. Positional parameters are assigned
from the shell’s arguments when it is invoked, and may be reassigned
using the ‘set’ builtin command. Positional parameter ‘N’ may be
referenced as ‘$N^{\prime },ora{s}^{\prime }$N’ when ‘N’ consists of a single digit.
Positional parameters may not be assigned to with assignment statements.
The ‘set’ and ‘shift’ builtins are used to set and unset them (*note
Shell Builtin Commands:😃. The positional parameters are temporarily
replaced when a shell function is executed (*note Shell Functions:😃.

When a positional parameter consisting of more than a single digit is
expanded, it must be enclosed in braces.

File: bash.info, Node: Special Parameters, Prev: Positional Parameters, Up: Shell Parameters

3.4.2 Special Parameters

The shell treats several parameters specially. These parameters may
only be referenced; assignment to them is not allowed.

‘’
($\ast )Expandstothepositionalparameters,startingfromone.Whentheexpansionisnotwithindoublequotes,eachpositionalparameterexpandstoaseparateword.Incontextswhereitisperformed,thosewordsaresubjecttofurtherwordsplittingandfilenameexpansion.Whentheexpansionoccurswithindoublequotes,itexpandstoasinglewordwiththevalueofeachparameterseparatedbythefirstcharacterofth{e}^{\prime }IF{S}^{\prime }specialvariable.Thatis{,}^{\prime }"$"’ is equivalent to ‘“$1C$2C…”’, where C
is the first character of the value of the ‘IFS’ variable. If
‘IFS’ is unset, the parameters are separated by spaces. If ‘IFS’
is null, the parameters are joined without intervening separators.

‘@’
($@)Expandstothepositionalparameters,startingfromone.Incontextswherewordsplittingisperformed,thisexpandseachpositionalparametertoaseparateword;ifnotwithindoublequotes,thesewordsaresubjecttowordsplitting.Incontextswherewordsplittingisnotperformed,thisexpandstoasinglewordwitheachpositionalparameterseparatedbyaspace.Whentheexpansionoccurswithindoublequotes,andwordsplittingisperformed,eachparameterexpandstoaseparateword.Thatis{,}^{\prime }"$@“’ is equivalent to '”$1" “$2"..{.}^{\prime }.Ifthedouble-quotedexpansionoccurswithinaword,theexpansionofthefirstparameterisjoinedwiththebeginningpartoftheoriginalword,andtheexpansionofthelastparameterisjoinedwiththelastpartoftheoriginalword.Whentherearenopositionalparameters{,}^{\prime }"$@”’ and ‘$@’ expand to nothing (i.e., they are
removed).

‘#’
($#) Expands to the number of positional parameters in decimal.

‘?’
($?) Expands to the exit status of the most recently executed
foreground pipeline.

‘-’
($-, a hyphen.) Expands to the current option flags as specified
upon invocation, by the ‘set’ builtin command, or those set by the
shell itself (such as the ‘-i’ option).

'${}^{\prime }($$) Expands to the process ID of the shell. In a ‘()’ subshell,
it expands to the process ID of the invoking shell, not the
subshell.

‘!’
($!) Expands to the process ID of the job most recently placed
into the background, whether executed as an asynchronous command or
using the ‘bg’ builtin (*note Job Control Builtins:😃.

‘0’
($0) Expands to the name of the shell or shell script. This is set
at shell initialization. If Bash is invoked with a file of
commands (*note Shell Scripts:😃, ‘$0’ is set to the name of that
file. If Bash is started with the ‘-c’ option (*note Invoking
Bash:😃, then ‘$0’ is set to the first argument after the string to
be executed, if one is present. Otherwise, it is set to the
filename used to invoke Bash, as given by argument zero.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Expansions, Next: Redirections, Prev: Shell Parameters, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.5 Shell Expansions

Expansion is performed on the command line after it has been split into
'token’s. There are seven kinds of expansion performed:

• brace expansion

• tilde expansion

• parameter and variable expansion

• command substitution

• arithmetic expansion

• word splitting

• filename expansion

• Menu:

• Brace Expansion:: Expansion of expressions within braces.

• Tilde Expansion:: Expansion of the ~ character.

• Shell Parameter Expansion:: How Bash expands variables to their values.

• Command Substitution:: Using the output of a command as an argument.

• Arithmetic Expansion:: How to use arithmetic in shell expansions.

• Process Substitution:: A way to write and read to and from a
  command.

• Word Splitting:: How the results of expansion are split into separate
  arguments.

• Filename Expansion:: A shorthand for specifying filenames matching patterns.

• Quote Removal:: How and when quote characters are removed from
  words.

  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
  filename expansion.

  On systems that can support it, there is an additional expansion
  available: PROCESS SUBSTITUTION. This is performed at the same time as
  tilde, parameter, variable, and arithmetic expansion and command
  substitution.

  After these expansions are performed, quote characters present in the
  original word are removed unless they have been quoted themselves (QUOTE
  REMOVAL).

  Only brace expansion, word splitting, and filename expansion can
  increase the number of words of the expansion; other expansions expand a
  single word to a single word. The only exceptions to this are the
  expansions of ‘"$@{"}^{\prime }an{d}^{\prime }$*’ (note Special Parameters:😃, and
  '"$NAME[@]{"}^{\prime }an{d}^{\prime }${NAME[]}’ (*note Arrays:😃.

  After all expansions, ‘quote removal’ (*note Quote Removal:😃 is
  performed.

File: bash.info, Node: Brace Expansion, Next: Tilde Expansion, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.1 Brace Expansion

Brace expansion is a mechanism by which arbitrary strings may be
generated. This mechanism is similar to FILENAME EXPANSION (*note
Filename Expansion:😃, but the filenames generated need not exist.
Patterns to be brace expanded take the form of an optional PREAMBLE,
followed by either a series of comma-separated strings or a sequence
expression between a pair of braces, followed by an optional POSTSCRIPT.
The preamble is prefixed to each string contained within the braces, and
the postscript is then appended to each resulting string, expanding left
to right.

Brace expansions may be nested. The results of each expanded string
are not sorted; left to right order is preserved. For example,
bash$ echo a{d,c,b}e
ade ace abe

A sequence expression takes the form ‘{X…Y[…INCR]}’, where X and Y
are either integers or single characters, and INCR, an optional
increment, is an integer. When integers are supplied, the expression
expands to each number between X and Y, inclusive. Supplied integers
may be prefixed with ‘0’ to force each term to have the same width.
When either X or Y begins with a zero, the shell attempts to force all
generated terms to contain the same number of digits, zero-padding where
necessary. When characters are supplied, the expression expands to each
character lexicographically between X and Y, inclusive, using the
default C locale. Note that both X and Y must be of the same type.
When the increment is supplied, it is used as the difference between
each term. The default increment is 1 or -1 as appropriate.

Brace expansion is performed before any other expansions, and any
characters special to other expansions are preserved in the result. It
is strictly textual. Bash does not apply any syntactic interpretation
to the context of the expansion or the text between the braces.

A correctly-formed brace expansion must contain unquoted opening and
closing braces, and at least one unquoted comma or a valid sequence
expression. Any incorrectly formed brace expansion is left unchanged.

A { or ‘,’ may be quoted with a backslash to prevent its being
considered part of a brace expression. To avoid conflicts with
parameter expansion, the string ‘${’ is not considered eligible for
brace expansion, and inhibits brace expansion until the closing ‘}’.

This construct is typically used as shorthand when the common prefix
of the strings to be generated is longer than in the above example:
mkdir /usr/local/src/bash/{old,new,dist,bugs}
or
chown root /usr/{ucb/{ex,edit},lib/{ex?.?*,how_ex}}

File: bash.info, Node: Tilde Expansion, Next: Shell Parameter Expansion, Prev: Brace Expansion, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.2 Tilde Expansion

If a word begins with an unquoted tilde character (‘~’), all of the
characters up to the first unquoted slash (or all characters, if there
is no unquoted slash) are considered a TILDE-PREFIX. If none of the
characters in the tilde-prefix are quoted, the characters in the
tilde-prefix following the tilde are treated as a possible LOGIN NAME.
If this login name is the null string, the tilde is replaced with the
value of the ‘HOME’ shell variable. If ‘HOME’ is unset, the home
directory of the user executing the shell is substituted instead.
Otherwise, the tilde-prefix is replaced with the home directory
associated with the specified login name.

If the tilde-prefix is ‘~+’, the value of the shell variable ‘PWD’
replaces the tilde-prefix. If the tilde-prefix is ‘~-’, the value of
the shell variable ‘OLDPWD’, if it is set, is substituted.

If the characters following the tilde in the tilde-prefix consist of
a number N, optionally prefixed by a ‘+’ or a ‘-’, the tilde-prefix is
replaced with the corresponding element from the directory stack, as it
would be displayed by the ‘dirs’ builtin invoked with the characters
following tilde in the tilde-prefix as an argument (*note The Directory
Stack:😃. If the tilde-prefix, sans the tilde, consists of a number
without a leading ‘+’ or ‘-’, ‘+’ is assumed.

If the login name is invalid, or the tilde expansion fails, the word
is left unchanged.

Each variable assignment is checked for unquoted tilde-prefixes
immediately following a ‘:’ or the first ‘=’. In these cases, tilde
expansion is also performed. Consequently, one may use filenames with
tildes in assignments to ‘PATH’, ‘MAILPATH’, and ‘CDPATH’, and the shell
assigns the expanded value.

The following table shows how Bash treats unquoted tilde-prefixes:

‘~’
The value of ‘KaTeX parse error: Double superscript at position 7: HOME' '̲~/foo' 'HOME/foo’

‘~fred/foo’
The subdirectory ‘foo’ of the home directory of the user ‘fred’

‘~+/foo’
‘$PWD/foo’

‘~-/foo’
‘${OLDPWD-’~-‘}/foo’

‘~N’
The string that would be displayed by ‘dirs +N’

‘~+N’
The string that would be displayed by ‘dirs +N’

‘~-N’
The string that would be displayed by ‘dirs -N’

Bash also performs tilde expansion on words satisfying the conditions
of variable assignments (*note Shell Parameters:😃 when they appear as
arguments to simple commands. Bash does not do this, except for the
DECLARATION commands listed above, when in POSIX mode.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Parameter Expansion, Next: Command Substitution, Prev: Tilde Expansion, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.3 Shell Parameter Expansion

The ‘$’ character introduces parameter expansion, command substitution,
or arithmetic expansion. The parameter name or symbol to be expanded
may be enclosed in braces, which are optional but serve to protect the
variable to be expanded from characters immediately following it which
could be interpreted as part of the name.

When braces are used, the matching ending brace is the first ‘}’ not
escaped by a backslash or within a quoted string, and not within an
embedded arithmetic expansion, command substitution, or parameter
expansion.

The basic form of parameter expansion is ${PARAMETER}. The value of
PARAMETER is substituted. The PARAMETER is a shell parameter as
described above (*note Shell Parameters:😃 or an array reference (*note
Arrays:😃. The braces are required when PARAMETER is a positional
parameter with more than one digit, or when PARAMETER is followed by a
character that is not to be interpreted as part of its name.

If the first character of PARAMETER is an exclamation point (!), and
PARAMETER is not a NAMEREF, it introduces a level of indirection. Bash
uses the value formed by expanding the rest of PARAMETER as the new
PARAMETER; this is then expanded and that value is used in the rest of
the expansion, rather than the expansion of the original PARAMETER.
This is known as ‘indirect expansion’. The value is subject to tilde
expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic
expansion. If PARAMETER is a nameref, this expands to the name of the
variable referenced by PARAMETER instead of performing the complete
indirect expansion. The exceptions to this are the expansions of
${!PREFIX*} and ${!NAME[@]} described below. The exclamation point must
immediately follow the left brace in order to introduce indirection.

In each of the cases below, WORD is subject to tilde expansion,
parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion.

When not performing substring expansion, using the form described
below (e.g., ‘:-’), Bash tests for a parameter that is unset or null.
Omitting the colon results in a test only for a parameter that is unset.
Put another way, if the colon is included, the operator tests for both
PARAMETER’s existence and that its value is not null; if the colon is
omitted, the operator tests only for existence.

‘${PARAMETER:-WORD}’
If PARAMETER is unset or null, the expansion of WORD is
substituted. Otherwise, the value of PARAMETER is substituted.

‘${PARAMETER:=WORD}’
If PARAMETER is unset or null, the expansion of WORD is assigned to
PARAMETER. The value of PARAMETER is then substituted. Positional
parameters and special parameters may not be assigned to in this
way.

‘${PARAMETER:?WORD}’
If PARAMETER is null or unset, the expansion of WORD (or a message
to that effect if WORD is not present) is written to the standard
error and the shell, if it is not interactive, exits. Otherwise,
the value of PARAMETER is substituted.

‘${PARAMETER:+WORD}’
If PARAMETER is null or unset, nothing is substituted, otherwise
the expansion of WORD is substituted.

‘KaTeX parse error: Double superscript at position 21: …METER:OFFSET}' '̲{PARAMETER:OFFSET:LENGTH}’
This is referred to as Substring Expansion. It expands to up to
LENGTH characters of the value of PARAMETER starting at the
character specified by OFFSET. If PARAMETER is ‘@’, an indexed
array subscripted by ‘@’ or ‘*’, or an associative array name, the
results differ as described below. If LENGTH is omitted, it
expands to the substring of the value of PARAMETER starting at the
character specified by OFFSET and extending to the end of the
value. LENGTH and OFFSET are arithmetic expressions (*note Shell
Arithmetic:😃.

 If OFFSET evaluates to a number less than zero, the value is used
 as an offset in characters from the end of the value of PARAMETER.
 If LENGTH evaluates to a number less than zero, it is interpreted
 as an offset in characters from the end of the value of PARAMETER
 rather than a number of characters, and the expansion is the
 characters between OFFSET and that result.  Note that a negative
 offset must be separated from the colon by at least one space to
 avoid being confused with the ':-' expansion.

 Here are some examples illustrating substring expansion on
 parameters and subscripted arrays:

 $ string=01234567890abcdefgh
 $ echo ${string:7}
 7890abcdefgh
 $ echo ${string:7:0}
 
 $ echo ${string:7:2}
 78
 $ echo ${string:7:-2}
 7890abcdef
 $ echo ${string: -7}
 bcdefgh
 $ echo ${string: -7:0}
 
 $ echo ${string: -7:2}
 bc
 $ echo ${string: -7:-2}
 bcdef
 $ set -- 01234567890abcdefgh
 $ echo ${1:7}
 7890abcdefgh
 $ echo ${1:7:0}
 
 $ echo ${1:7:2}
 78
 $ echo ${1:7:-2}
 7890abcdef
 $ echo ${1: -7}
 bcdefgh
 $ echo ${1: -7:0}
 
 $ echo ${1: -7:2}
 bc
 $ echo ${1: -7:-2}
 bcdef
 $ array[0]=01234567890abcdefgh
 $ echo ${array[0]:7}
 7890abcdefgh
 $ echo ${array[0]:7:0}
 
 $ echo ${array[0]:7:2}
 78
 $ echo ${array[0]:7:-2}
 7890abcdef
 $ echo ${array[0]: -7}
 bcdefgh
 $ echo ${array[0]: -7:0}
 
 $ echo ${array[0]: -7:2}
 bc
 $ echo ${array[0]: -7:-2}
 bcdef

 If PARAMETER is '@', the result is LENGTH positional parameters
 beginning at OFFSET.  A negative OFFSET is taken relative to one
 greater than the greatest positional parameter, so an offset of -1
 evaluates to the last positional parameter.  It is an expansion
 error if LENGTH evaluates to a number less than zero.

 The following examples illustrate substring expansion using
 positional parameters:

 $ set -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 a b c d e f g h
 $ echo ${@:7}
 7 8 9 0 a b c d e f g h
 $ echo ${@:7:0}
 
 $ echo ${@:7:2}
 7 8
 $ echo ${@:7:-2}
 bash: -2: substring expression < 0
 $ echo ${@: -7:2}
 b c
 $ echo ${@:0}
 ./bash 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 a b c d e f g h
 $ echo ${@:0:2}
 ./bash 1
 $ echo ${@: -7:0}
 

 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.  It is an
 expansion error if LENGTH evaluates to a number less than zero.

 These examples show how you can use substring expansion with
 indexed arrays:

 $ array=(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 a b c d e f g h)
 $ echo ${array[@]:7}
 7 8 9 0 a b c d e f g h
 $ echo ${array[@]:7:2}
 7 8
 $ echo ${array[@]: -7:2}
 b c
 $ echo ${array[@]: -7:-2}
 bash: -2: substring expression < 0
 $ echo ${array[@]:0}
 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 a b c d e f g h
 $ echo ${array[@]:0:2}
 0 1
 $ echo ${array[@]: -7:0}
 

 Substring expansion applied to an associative array produces
 undefined results.

 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.

‘KaTeX parse error: Double superscript at position 13: {!PREFIX*}' '̲{!PREFIX@}’
Expands to the names of variables whose names begin with PREFIX,
separated by the first character of the ‘IFS’ special variable.
When ‘@’ is used and the expansion appears within double quotes,
each variable name expands to a separate word.

‘KaTeX parse error: Double superscript at position 13: {!NAME[@]}' '̲{!NAME[*]}’
If NAME is an array variable, expands to the list of array indices
(keys) assigned in NAME. If NAME is not an array, expands to 0 if
NAME is set and null otherwise. When ‘@’ is used and the expansion
appears within double quotes, each key expands to a separate word.

‘${#PARAMETER}’
The length in characters of the expanded value of PARAMETER is
substituted. If PARAMETER is ‘’ or ‘@’, the value substituted is
the number of positional parameters. If PARAMETER is an array name
subscripted by '’ or ‘@’, the value substituted is the number of
elements in the array. If PARAMETER is an indexed array name
subscripted by a negative number, that number is interpreted as
relative to one greater than the maximum index of PARAMETER, so
negative indices count back from the end of the array, and an index
of -1 references the last element.

‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got '#' at position 11: {PARAMETER#̲WORD}' '{PARAMETER##WORD}’
The WORD is expanded to produce a pattern and matched according to
the rules described below (note Pattern Matching:😃. If the
pattern matches the beginning of the expanded value of PARAMETER,
then the result of the expansion is the expanded value of PARAMETER
with the shortest matching pattern (the ‘#’ case) or the longest
matching pattern (the ‘##’ case) deleted. If PARAMETER is ‘@’ or
'', the pattern removal operation is applied to each positional
parameter in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list. If
PARAMETER is an array variable subscripted with ‘@’ or ‘*’, the
pattern removal operation is applied to each member of the array in
turn, and the expansion is the resultant list.

‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: …AMETER%WORD}' '{PARAMETER%%WORD}’
The WORD is expanded to produce a pattern and matched according to
the rules described below (note Pattern Matching:😃. If the
pattern matches a trailing portion of the expanded value of
PARAMETER, then the result of the expansion is the value of
PARAMETER with the shortest matching pattern (the ‘%’ case) or the
longest matching pattern (the ‘%%’ case) deleted. If PARAMETER is
‘@’ or '', the pattern removal operation is applied to each
positional parameter in turn, and the expansion is the resultant
list. If PARAMETER is an array variable subscripted with ‘@’ or
‘*’, the pattern removal operation is applied to each member of the
array in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list.

‘${PARAMETER/PATTERN/STRING}’

 The PATTERN is expanded to produce a pattern just as in filename
 expansion.  PARAMETER is expanded and the longest match of PATTERN
 against its value is replaced with STRING.  The match is performed
 according to the rules described below (*note Pattern Matching::).
 If PATTERN begins with '/', all matches of PATTERN are replaced
 with STRING.  Normally only the first match is replaced.  If
 PATTERN begins with '#', it must match at the beginning of the
 expanded value of PARAMETER.  If PATTERN begins with '%', it must
 match at the end of the expanded value of PARAMETER.  If STRING is
 null, matches of PATTERN are deleted and the '/' following PATTERN
 may be omitted.  If the 'nocasematch' shell option (see the
 description of 'shopt' in *note The Shopt Builtin::) is enabled,
 the match is performed without regard to the case of alphabetic
 characters.  If PARAMETER is '@' or '*', the substitution operation
 is applied to each positional parameter in turn, and the expansion
 is the resultant list.  If PARAMETER is an array variable
 subscripted with '@' or '*', the substitution operation is applied
 to each member of the array in turn, and the expansion is the
 resultant list.

‘KaTeX parse error: Double superscript at position 22: …ETER^PATTERN}' '̲{PARAMETER^^PATTERN}’
‘KaTeX parse error: Double superscript at position 22: …ETER,PATTERN}' '̲{PARAMETER,PATTERN}’
This expansion modifies the case of alphabetic characters in
PARAMETER. The PATTERN is expanded to produce a pattern just as in
filename expansion. Each character in the expanded value of
PARAMETER is tested against PATTERN, and, if it matches the
pattern, its case is converted. The pattern should not attempt to
match more than one character. The ‘^’ operator converts lowercase
letters matching PATTERN to uppercase; the ‘,’ operator converts
matching uppercase letters to lowercase. The ‘^^’ and ‘,’
expansions convert each matched character in the expanded value;
the ‘^’ and ‘,’ expansions match and convert only the first
character in the expanded value. If PATTERN is omitted, it is
treated like a ‘?’, which matches every character. If PARAMETER is
‘@’ or ‘', the case modification operation is applied to each
positional parameter in turn, and the expansion is the resultant
list. If PARAMETER is an array variable subscripted with ‘@’ or
'’, the case modification operation is applied to each member of
the array in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list.

‘${PARAMETER@OPERATOR}’
The expansion is either a transformation of the value of PARAMETER
or information about PARAMETER itself, depending on the value of
OPERATOR. Each OPERATOR is a single letter:

 'U'
      The expansion is a string that is the value of PARAMETER with
      lowercase alphabetic characters converted to uppercase.
 'u'
      The expansion is a string that is the value of PARAMETER with
      the first character converted to uppercase, if it is
      alphabetic.
 'L'
      The expansion is a string that is the value of PARAMETER with
      uppercase alphabetic characters converted to lowercase.
 'Q'
      The expansion is a string that is the value of PARAMETER
      quoted in a format that can be reused as input.
 'E'
      The expansion is a string that is the value of PARAMETER with
      backslash escape sequences expanded as with the '$'...''
      quoting mechanism.
 'P'
      The expansion is a string that is the result of expanding the
      value of PARAMETER as if it were a prompt string (*note
      Controlling the Prompt::).
 'A'
      The expansion is a string in the form of an assignment
      statement or 'declare' command that, if evaluated, will
      recreate PARAMETER with its attributes and value.
 'K'
      Produces a possibly-quoted version of the value of PARAMETER,
      except that it prints the values of indexed and associative
      arrays as a sequence of quoted key-value pairs (*note
      Arrays::).
 'a'
      The expansion is a string consisting of flag values
      representing PARAMETER's attributes.

 If PARAMETER is '@' or '*', the operation is applied to each
 positional parameter in turn, and the expansion is the resultant
 list.  If PARAMETER is an array variable subscripted with '@' or
 '*', the operation is applied to each member of the array in turn,
 and the expansion is the resultant list.

 The result of the expansion is subject to word splitting and
 filename expansion as described below.

File: bash.info, Node: Command Substitution, Next: Arithmetic Expansion, Prev: Shell Parameter Expansion, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.4 Command Substitution

Command substitution allows the output of a command to replace the
command itself. Command substitution occurs when a command is enclosed
as follows:
$(COMMAND)
or
COMMAND

Bash performs the expansion by executing COMMAND in a subshell
environment and replacing the command substitution with the standard
output of the command, with any trailing newlines deleted. Embedded
newlines are not deleted, but they may be removed during word splitting.
The command substitution ‘$(catFILE{)}^{\prime }canbereplacedbytheequivalentbutfaste{r}^{\prime }$(< FILE)’.

When the old-style backquote form of substitution is used, backslash
retains its literal meaning except when followed by ‘${}^{\prime }{,}^{\prime }{‘}^{\prime },o{r}^{\prime }\acute{.}Thefirstbackquotenotprecededbyabackslashterminatesthecommandsubstitution.Whenusingth{e}^{\prime }$(COMMAND)’ form, all characters between
the parentheses make up the command; none are treated specially.

Command substitutions may be nested. To nest when using the
backquoted form, escape the inner backquotes with backslashes.

If the substitution appears within double quotes, word splitting and
filename expansion are not performed on the results.

File: bash.info, Node: Arithmetic Expansion, Next: Process Substitution, Prev: Command Substitution, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.5 Arithmetic Expansion

Arithmetic expansion allows the evaluation of an arithmetic expression
and the substitution of the result. The format for arithmetic expansion
is:

 $(( EXPRESSION ))

The expression is treated as if it were within double quotes, but a
double quote inside the parentheses is not treated specially. All
tokens in the expression undergo parameter and variable expansion,
command substitution, and quote removal. The result is treated as the
arithmetic expression to be evaluated. Arithmetic expansions may be
nested.

The evaluation is performed according to the rules listed below
(*note Shell Arithmetic:😃. If the expression is invalid, Bash prints a
message indicating failure to the standard error and no substitution
occurs.

File: bash.info, Node: Process Substitution, Next: Word Splitting, Prev: Arithmetic Expansion, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.6 Process Substitution

Process substitution allows a process’s input or output to be referred
to using a filename. It takes the form of
<(LIST)
or
>(LIST)
The process LIST is run asynchronously, and its input or output appears
as a filename. This filename is passed as an argument to the current
command as the result of the expansion. If the ‘>(LIST)’ form is used,
writing to the file will provide input for LIST. If the ‘<(LIST)’ form
is used, the file passed as an argument should be read to obtain the
output of LIST. Note that no space may appear between the ‘<’ or ‘>’
and the left parenthesis, otherwise the construct would be interpreted
as a redirection. Process substitution is supported on systems that
support named pipes (FIFOs) or the ‘/dev/fd’ method of naming open
files.

When available, process substitution is performed simultaneously with
parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic
expansion.

File: bash.info, Node: Word Splitting, Next: Filename Expansion, Prev: Process Substitution, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.7 Word Splitting

The shell scans the results of parameter expansion, command
substitution, and arithmetic expansion that did not occur within double
quotes for word splitting.

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
‘’, the default, then sequences of ’ ',
‘’, and ‘’ 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.

Explicit null arguments (‘“”’ or ‘’‘’) are retained and passed to
commands as empty strings. Unquoted implicit null arguments, resulting
from the expansion of parameters that have no values, are removed. If a
parameter with no value is expanded within double quotes, a null
argument results and is retained and passed to a command as an empty
string. When a quoted null argument appears as part of a word whose
expansion is non-null, the null argument is removed. That is, the word
‘-d’‘’ becomes ‘-d’ after word splitting and null argument removal.

Note that if no expansion occurs, no splitting is performed.

File: bash.info, Node: Filename Expansion, Next: Quote Removal, Prev: Word Splitting, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.8 Filename Expansion

• Menu:

• Pattern Matching:: How the shell matches patterns.

After word splitting, unless the ‘-f’ option has been set (note The Set
Builtin:😃, Bash scans each word for the characters '', ‘?’, and ‘[’.
If one of these characters appears, and is not quoted, then the word is
regarded as a PATTERN, and replaced with an alphabetically sorted list
of filenames matching the pattern (*note Pattern Matching:😃. If no
matching filenames are found, and the shell option ‘nullglob’ is
disabled, the word is left unchanged. If the ‘nullglob’ option is set,
and no matches are found, the word is removed. If the ‘failglob’ shell
option is set, and no matches are found, an error message is printed and
the command is not executed. If the shell option ‘nocaseglob’ is
enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of alphabetic
characters.

When a pattern is used for filename expansion, the character ‘.’ at
the start of a filename or immediately following a slash must be matched
explicitly, unless the shell option ‘dotglob’ is set. The filenames ‘.’
and ‘…’ must always be matched explicitly, even if ‘dotglob’ is set.
In other cases, the ‘.’ character is not treated specially.

When matching a filename, the slash character must always be matched
explicitly by a slash in the pattern, but in other matching contexts it
can be matched by a special pattern character as described below (*note
Pattern Matching:😃.

See the description of ‘shopt’ in *note The Shopt Builtin::, for a
description of the ‘nocaseglob’, ‘nullglob’, ‘failglob’, and ‘dotglob’
options.

The ‘GLOBIGNORE’ shell variable may be used to restrict the set of
file names matching a pattern. If ‘GLOBIGNORE’ is set, each matching
file name that also matches one of the patterns in ‘GLOBIGNORE’ is
removed from the list of matches. If the ‘nocaseglob’ option is set,
the matching against the patterns in ‘GLOBIGNORE’ is performed without
regard to case. The filenames ‘.’ and ‘…’ are always ignored when
‘GLOBIGNORE’ is set and not null. However, setting ‘GLOBIGNORE’ to a
non-null value has the effect of enabling the ‘dotglob’ shell option, so
all other filenames beginning with a ‘.’ will match. To get the old
behavior of ignoring filenames beginning with a ‘.’, make ‘.*’ one of
the patterns in ‘GLOBIGNORE’. The ‘dotglob’ option is disabled when
‘GLOBIGNORE’ is unset.

File: bash.info, Node: Pattern Matching, Up: Filename Expansion

3.5.8.1 Pattern Matching
…

Any character that appears in a pattern, other than the special pattern
characters described below, matches itself. The NUL character may not
occur in a pattern. A backslash escapes the following character; the
escaping backslash is discarded when matching. The special pattern
characters must be quoted if they are to be matched literally.

The special pattern characters have the following meanings:
‘’
Matches any string, including the null string. When the ‘globstar’
shell option is enabled, and '’ is used in a filename expansion
context, two adjacent ''s used as a single pattern will match all
files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. If followed
by a ‘/’, two adjacent ''s will match only directories and
subdirectories.
‘?’
Matches any single character.
‘[…]’
Matches any one of the enclosed characters. A pair of characters
separated by a hyphen denotes a RANGE EXPRESSION; any character
that falls between those two characters, inclusive, using the
current locale’s collating sequence and character set, is matched.
If the first character following the ‘[’ is a ‘!’ or a ‘^’ then any
character not enclosed is matched. A ‘-’ may be matched by
including it as the first or last character in the set. A ‘]’ may
be matched by including it as the first character in the set. The
sorting order of characters in range expressions is determined by
the current locale and the values of the ‘LC_COLLATE’ and ‘LC_ALL’
shell variables, if set.

 For example, in the default C locale, '[a-dx-z]' is equivalent to
 '[abcdxyz]'.  Many locales sort characters in dictionary order, and
 in these locales '[a-dx-z]' is typically not equivalent to
 '[abcdxyz]'; it might be equivalent to '[aBbCcDdxXyYz]', for
 example.  To obtain the traditional interpretation of ranges in
 bracket expressions, you can force the use of the C locale by
 setting the 'LC_COLLATE' or 'LC_ALL' environment variable to the
 value 'C', or enable the 'globasciiranges' shell option.

 Within '[' and ']', CHARACTER CLASSES can be specified using the
 syntax '[:'CLASS':]', where CLASS is one of the following classes
 defined in the POSIX standard:
      alnum   alpha   ascii   blank   cntrl   digit   graph   lower
      print   punct   space   upper   word    xdigit
 A character class matches any character belonging to that class.
 The 'word' character class matches letters, digits, and the
 character '_'.

 Within '[' and ']', an EQUIVALENCE CLASS can be specified using the
 syntax '[='C'=]', which matches all characters with the same
 collation weight (as defined by the current locale) as the
 character C.

 Within '[' and ']', the syntax '[.'SYMBOL'.]' matches the collating
 symbol SYMBOL.

If the ‘extglob’ shell option is enabled using the ‘shopt’ builtin,
several extended pattern matching operators are recognized. In the
following description, a PATTERN-LIST is a list of one or more patterns
separated by a ‘|’. Composite patterns may be formed using one or more
of the following sub-patterns:

‘?(PATTERN-LIST)’
Matches zero or one occurrence of the given patterns.

‘*(PATTERN-LIST)’
Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns.

‘+(PATTERN-LIST)’
Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns.

‘@(PATTERN-LIST)’
Matches one of the given patterns.

‘!(PATTERN-LIST)’
Matches anything except one of the given patterns.

Complicated extended pattern matching against long strings is slow,
especially when the patterns contain alternations and the strings
contain multiple matches. Using separate matches against shorter
strings, or using arrays of strings instead of a single long string, may
be faster.

File: bash.info, Node: Quote Removal, Prev: Filename Expansion, Up: Shell Expansions

3.5.9 Quote Removal

After the preceding expansions, all unquoted occurrences of the
characters ‘’, ‘’', and ‘"’ that did not result from one of the above
expansions are removed.

File: bash.info, Node: Redirections, Next: Executing Commands, Prev: Shell Expansions, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.6 Redirections

Before a command is executed, its input and output may be REDIRECTED
using a special notation interpreted by the shell. Redirection allows
commands’ file handles to be duplicated, opened, closed, made to refer
to different files, and can change the files the command reads from and
writes to. Redirection may also be used to modify file handles in the
current shell execution environment. The following redirection
operators may precede or appear anywhere within a simple command or may
follow a command. Redirections are processed in the order they appear,
from left to right.

Each redirection that may be preceded by a file descriptor number may
instead be preceded by a word of the form {VARNAME}. In this case, for
each redirection operator except >&- and <&-, the shell will allocate a
file descriptor greater than 10 and assign it to {VARNAME}. If >&- or
<&- is preceded by {VARNAME}, the value of VARNAME defines the file
descriptor to close. If {VARNAME} is supplied, the redirection persists
beyond the scope of the command, allowing the shell programmer to manage
the file descriptor’s lifetime manually.

In the following descriptions, if the file descriptor number is
omitted, and the first character of the redirection operator is ‘<’, the
redirection refers to the standard input (file descriptor 0). If the
first character of the redirection operator is ‘>’, the redirection
refers to the standard output (file descriptor 1).

The word following the redirection operator in the following
descriptions, unless otherwise noted, is subjected to brace expansion,
tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic
expansion, quote removal, filename expansion, and word splitting. If it
expands to more than one word, Bash reports an error.

Note that the order of redirections is significant. For example, the
command
ls > DIRLIST 2>&1
directs both standard output (file descriptor 1) and standard error
(file descriptor 2) to the file DIRLIST, while the command
ls 2>&1 > DIRLIST
directs only the standard output to file DIRLIST, because the standard
error was made a copy of the standard output before the standard output
was redirected to DIRLIST.

Bash handles several filenames specially when they are used in
redirections, as described in the following table. If the operating
system on which Bash is running provides these special files, bash will
use them; otherwise it will emulate them internally with the behavior
described below.

‘/dev/fd/FD’
If FD is a valid integer, file descriptor FD is duplicated.

‘/dev/stdin’
File descriptor 0 is duplicated.

‘/dev/stdout’
File descriptor 1 is duplicated.

‘/dev/stderr’
File descriptor 2 is duplicated.

‘/dev/tcp/HOST/PORT’
If HOST is a valid hostname or Internet address, and PORT is an
integer port number or service name, Bash attempts to open the
corresponding TCP socket.

‘/dev/udp/HOST/PORT’
If HOST is a valid hostname or Internet address, and PORT is an
integer port number or service name, Bash attempts to open the
corresponding UDP socket.

A failure to open or create a file causes the redirection to fail.

Redirections using file descriptors greater than 9 should be used
with care, as they may conflict with file descriptors the shell uses
internally.

3.6.1 Redirecting Input

Redirection of input causes the file whose name results from the
expansion of WORD to be opened for reading on file descriptor ‘n’, or
the standard input (file descriptor 0) if ‘n’ is not specified.

The general format for redirecting input is:
[N]<WORD

3.6.2 Redirecting Output

Redirection of output causes the file whose name results from the
expansion of WORD to be opened for writing on file descriptor N, or the
standard output (file descriptor 1) if N is not specified. If the file
does not exist it is created; if it does exist it is truncated to zero
size.

The general format for redirecting output is:
[N]>[|]WORD

If the redirection operator is ‘>’, and the ‘noclobber’ option to the
‘set’ builtin has been enabled, the redirection will fail if the file
whose name results from the expansion of WORD exists and is a regular
file. If the redirection operator is ‘>|’, or the redirection operator
is ‘>’ and the ‘noclobber’ option is not enabled, the redirection is
attempted even if the file named by WORD exists.

3.6.3 Appending Redirected Output

Redirection of output in this fashion causes the file whose name results
from the expansion of WORD to be opened for appending on file descriptor
N, or the standard output (file descriptor 1) if N is not specified. If
the file does not exist it is created.

The general format for appending output is:
[N]>>WORD

3.6.4 Redirecting Standard Output and Standard Error

This construct allows both the standard output (file descriptor 1) and
the standard error output (file descriptor 2) to be redirected to the
file whose name is the expansion of WORD.

There are two formats for redirecting standard output and standard
error:
&>WORD
and
>&WORD
Of the two forms, the first is preferred. This is semantically
equivalent to
>WORD 2>&1
When using the second form, WORD may not expand to a number or ‘-’.
If it does, other redirection operators apply (see Duplicating File
Descriptors below) for compatibility reasons.

3.6.5 Appending Standard Output and Standard Error

This construct allows both the standard output (file descriptor 1) and
the standard error output (file descriptor 2) to be appended to the file
whose name is the expansion of WORD.

The format for appending standard output and standard error is:
&>>WORD
This is semantically equivalent to
>>WORD 2>&1
(see Duplicating File Descriptors below).

3.6.6 Here Documents

This type of redirection instructs the shell to read input from the
current source until a line containing only WORD (with no trailing
blanks) is seen. All of the lines read up to that point are then used
as the standard input (or file descriptor N if N is specified) for a
command.

The format of here-documents is:
[N]<<[-]WORD
HERE-DOCUMENT
DELIMITER

No parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, arithmetic
expansion, or filename expansion is performed on WORD. If any part of
WORD is quoted, the DELIMITER is the result of quote removal on WORD,
and the lines in the here-document are not expanded. If WORD is
unquoted, all lines of the here-document are subjected to parameter
expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion, the character
sequence ‘\newline’ is ignored, and ‘’ must be used to quote the
characters ‘’, ‘$’, and ‘`’.

If the redirection operator is ‘<<-’, then all leading tab characters
are stripped from input lines and the line containing DELIMITER. This
allows here-documents within shell scripts to be indented in a natural
fashion.

3.6.7 Here Strings

A variant of here documents, the format is:
[N]<<< WORD

The WORD undergoes tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion,
command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal. Filename
expansion and word splitting are not performed. The result is supplied
as a single string, with a newline appended, to the command on its
standard input (or file descriptor N if N is specified).

3.6.8 Duplicating File Descriptors

The redirection operator
[N]<&WORD
is used to duplicate input file descriptors. If WORD expands to one or
more digits, the file descriptor denoted by N is made to be a copy of
that file descriptor. If the digits in WORD do not specify a file
descriptor open for input, a redirection error occurs. If WORD
evaluates to ‘-’, file descriptor N is closed. If N is not specified,
the standard input (file descriptor 0) is used.

The operator
[N]>&WORD
is used similarly to duplicate output file descriptors. If N is not
specified, the standard output (file descriptor 1) is used. If the
digits in WORD do not specify a file descriptor open for output, a
redirection error occurs. If WORD evaluates to ‘-’, file descriptor N
is closed. As a special case, if N is omitted, and WORD does not expand
to one or more digits or ‘-’, the standard output and standard error are
redirected as described previously.

3.6.9 Moving File Descriptors

The redirection operator
[N]<&DIGIT-
moves the file descriptor DIGIT to file descriptor N, or the standard
input (file descriptor 0) if N is not specified. DIGIT is closed after
being duplicated to N.

Similarly, the redirection operator
[N]>&DIGIT-
moves the file descriptor DIGIT to file descriptor N, or the standard
output (file descriptor 1) if N is not specified.

3.6.10 Opening File Descriptors for Reading and Writing

The redirection operator
[N]<>WORD
causes the file whose name is the expansion of WORD to be opened for
both reading and writing on file descriptor N, or on file descriptor 0
if N is not specified. If the file does not exist, it is created.

File: bash.info, Node: Executing Commands, Next: Shell Scripts, Prev: Redirections, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.7 Executing Commands

• Menu:

• Simple Command Expansion:: How Bash expands simple commands before
  executing them.

• Command Search and Execution:: How Bash finds commands and runs them.

• Command Execution Environment:: The environment in which Bash
  executes commands that are not
  shell builtins.

• Environment:: The environment given to a command.

• Exit Status:: The status returned by commands and how Bash
  interprets it.

• Signals:: What happens when Bash or a command it runs
  receives a signal.

File: bash.info, Node: Simple Command Expansion, Next: Command Search and Execution, Up: Executing Commands

3.7.1 Simple Command Expansion

When a simple command is executed, the shell performs the following
expansions, assignments, and redirections, from left to right, in the
following order.

1. The words that the parser has marked as variable assignments (those
   preceding the command name) and redirections are saved for later
   processing.

2. The words that are not variable assignments or redirections are
   expanded (*note Shell Expansions:😃. If any words remain after
   expansion, the first word is taken to be the name of the command
   and the remaining words are the arguments.

3. Redirections are performed as described above (*note
   Redirections:😃.

4. The text after the ‘=’ in each variable assignment undergoes tilde
   expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic
   expansion, and quote removal before being assigned to the variable.

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. If any of the assignments attempts to assign a value to a
readonly variable, an error occurs, and the command exits with a
non-zero status.

If no command name results, redirections are performed, but do not
affect the current shell environment. A redirection error causes the
command to exit with a non-zero status.

If there is a command name left after expansion, execution proceeds
as described below. Otherwise, the command exits. If one of the
expansions contained a command substitution, the exit status of the
command is the exit status of the last command substitution performed.
If there were no command substitutions, the command exits with a status
of zero.

File: bash.info, Node: Command Search and Execution, Next: Command Execution Environment, Prev: Simple Command Expansion, Up: Executing Commands

3.7.2 Command Search and Execution

After a command has been split into words, if it results in a simple
command and an optional list of arguments, the following actions are
taken.

1. If the command name contains no slashes, the shell attempts to
   locate it. If there exists a shell function by that name, that
   function is invoked as described in *note Shell Functions::.

2. If the name does not match a function, the shell searches for it in
   the list of shell builtins. If a match is found, that builtin is
   invoked.

3. If the name is neither a shell function nor a builtin, and contains
   no slashes, Bash searches each element of ‘$PAT{H}^{\prime }foradirectorycontaininganexecutablefilebythatname.Bashusesahashtabletorememberthefullpathnamesofexecutablefilestoavoidmultipl{e}^{\prime }PAT{H}^{\prime }searches(seethedescriptiono{f}^{\prime }has{h}^{\prime }in\ast noteBourneShellBuiltins::).Afullsearchofthedirectoriesi{n}^{\prime }$PATH’ is performed only if the command is not found in the hash
   table. If the search is unsuccessful, the shell searches for a
   defined shell function named ‘command_not_found_handle’. If that
   function exists, it is invoked in a separate execution environment
   with the original command and the original command’s arguments as
   its arguments, and the function’s exit status becomes the exit
   status of that subshell. If that function is not defined, the
   shell prints an error message and returns an exit status of 127.

4. If the search is successful, or if the command name contains one or
   more slashes, the shell executes the named program in a separate
   execution environment. Argument 0 is set to the name given, and
   the remaining arguments to the command are set to the arguments
   supplied, if any.

5. If this execution fails because the file is not in executable
   format, and the file is not a directory, it is assumed to be a
   SHELL SCRIPT and the shell executes it as described in *note Shell
   Scripts::.

6. If the command was not begun asynchronously, the shell waits for
   the command to complete and collects its exit status.

File: bash.info, Node: Command Execution Environment, Next: Environment, Prev: Command Search and Execution, Up: Executing Commands

3.7.3 Command Execution Environment

The shell has an EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT, which consists of the following:

• open files inherited by the shell at invocation, as modified by
  redirections supplied to the ‘exec’ builtin

• the current working directory as set by ‘cd’, ‘pushd’, or ‘popd’,
  or inherited by the shell at invocation

• the file creation mode mask as set by ‘umask’ or inherited from the
  shell’s parent

• current traps set by ‘trap’

• shell parameters that are set by variable assignment or with ‘set’
  or inherited from the shell’s parent in the environment

• shell functions defined during execution or inherited from the
  shell’s parent in the environment

• options enabled at invocation (either by default or with
  command-line arguments) or by ‘set’

• options enabled by ‘shopt’ (*note The Shopt Builtin:😃

• shell aliases defined with ‘alias’ (*note Aliases:😃

• various process IDs, including those of background jobs (*note
  Lists:😃, the value of ‘$${}^{\prime },andthevalueo{f}^{\prime }$PPID’

When a simple command other than a builtin or shell function is to be
executed, it is invoked in a separate execution environment that
consists of the following. Unless otherwise noted, the values are
inherited from the shell.

• the shell’s open files, plus any modifications and additions
  specified by redirections to the command

• the current working directory

• the file creation mode mask

• shell variables and functions marked for export, along with
  variables exported for the command, passed in the environment
  (*note Environment:😃

• traps caught by the shell are reset to the values inherited from
  the shell’s parent, and traps ignored by the shell are ignored

A command invoked in this separate environment cannot affect the
shell’s execution environment.

Command substitution, commands grouped with parentheses, and
asynchronous commands are invoked in a subshell environment that is a
duplicate of the shell environment, except that traps caught by the
shell are reset to the values that the shell inherited from its parent
at invocation. Builtin commands that are invoked as part of a pipeline
are also executed in a subshell environment. Changes made to the
subshell environment cannot affect the shell’s execution environment.

Subshells spawned to execute command substitutions inherit the value
of the ‘-e’ option from the parent shell. When not in POSIX mode, Bash
clears the ‘-e’ option in such subshells.

If a command is followed by a ‘&’ and job control is not active, the
default standard input for the command is the empty file ‘/dev/null’.
Otherwise, the invoked command inherits the file descriptors of the
calling shell as modified by redirections.

File: bash.info, Node: Environment, Next: Exit Status, Prev: Command Execution Environment, Up: Executing Commands

3.7.4 Environment

When a program is invoked it is given an array of strings called the
ENVIRONMENT. This is a list of name-value pairs, of the form
‘name=value’.

Bash provides several ways to manipulate the environment. On
invocation, the shell scans its own environment and creates a parameter
for each name found, automatically marking it for EXPORT to child
processes. Executed commands inherit the environment. The ‘export’ and
‘declare -x’ commands allow parameters and functions to be added to and
deleted from the environment. If the value of a parameter in the
environment is modified, the new value becomes part of the environment,
replacing the old. The environment inherited by any executed command
consists of the shell’s initial environment, whose values may be
modified in the shell, less any pairs removed by the ‘unset’ and ‘export
-n’ commands, plus any additions via the ‘export’ and ‘declare -x’
commands.

The environment for any simple command or function may be augmented
temporarily by prefixing it with parameter assignments, as described in
*note Shell Parameters::. These assignment statements affect only the
environment seen by that command.

If the ‘-k’ option is set (*note The Set Builtin:😃, then all
parameter assignments are placed in the environment for a command, not
just those that precede the command name.

When Bash invokes an external command, the variable ‘$_’ is set to
the full pathname of the command and passed to that command in its
environment.

File: bash.info, Node: Exit Status, Next: Signals, Prev: Environment, Up: Executing Commands

3.7.5 Exit Status

The exit status of an executed command is the value returned by the
WAITPID system call or equivalent function. Exit statuses fall between
0 and 255, though, as explained below, the shell may use values above
125 specially. Exit statuses from shell builtins and compound commands
are also limited to this range. Under certain circumstances, the shell
will use special values to indicate specific failure modes.

For the shell’s purposes, a command which exits with a zero exit
status has succeeded. A non-zero exit status indicates failure. This
seemingly counter-intuitive scheme is used so there is one well-defined
way to indicate success and a variety of ways to indicate various
failure modes. When a command terminates on a fatal signal whose number
is N, Bash uses the value 128+N as the exit status.

If a command is not found, the child process created to execute it
returns a status of 127. If a command is found but is not executable,
the return status is 126.

If a command fails because of an error during expansion or
redirection, the exit status is greater than zero.

The exit status is used by the Bash conditional commands (*note
Conditional Constructs:😃 and some of the list constructs (*note
Lists:😃.

All of the Bash builtins return an exit status of zero if they
succeed and a non-zero status on failure, so they may be used by the
conditional and list constructs. All builtins return an exit status of
2 to indicate incorrect usage, generally invalid options or missing
arguments.

File: bash.info, Node: Signals, Prev: Exit Status, Up: Executing Commands

3.7.6 Signals

When Bash is interactive, in the absence of any traps, it ignores
‘SIGTERM’ (so that ‘kill 0’ does not kill an interactive shell), and
‘SIGINT’ is caught and handled (so that the ‘wait’ builtin is
interruptible). When Bash receives a ‘SIGINT’, it breaks out of any
executing loops. In all cases, Bash ignores ‘SIGQUIT’. If job control
is in effect (*note Job Control:😃, Bash ignores ‘SIGTTIN’, ‘SIGTTOU’,
and ‘SIGTSTP’.

Non-builtin commands started by Bash have signal handlers set to the
values inherited by the shell from its parent. When job control is not
in effect, asynchronous commands ignore ‘SIGINT’ and ‘SIGQUIT’ in
addition to these inherited handlers. Commands run as a result of
command substitution ignore the keyboard-generated job control signals
‘SIGTTIN’, ‘SIGTTOU’, and ‘SIGTSTP’.

The shell exits by default upon receipt of a ‘SIGHUP’. Before
exiting, an interactive shell resends the ‘SIGHUP’ to all jobs, running
or stopped. Stopped jobs are sent ‘SIGCONT’ to ensure that they receive
the ‘SIGHUP’. To prevent the shell from sending the ‘SIGHUP’ signal to
a particular job, it should be removed from the jobs table with the
‘disown’ builtin (*note Job Control Builtins:😃 or marked to not receive
‘SIGHUP’ using ‘disown -h’.

If the ‘huponexit’ shell option has been set with ‘shopt’ (*note The
Shopt Builtin:😃, Bash sends a ‘SIGHUP’ to all jobs when an interactive
login shell exits.

If Bash is waiting for a command to complete and receives a signal
for which a trap has been set, the trap will not be executed until the
command completes. When Bash is waiting for an asynchronous command via
the ‘wait’ builtin, the reception of a signal for which a trap has been
set will cause the ‘wait’ builtin to return immediately with an exit
status greater than 128, immediately after which the trap is executed.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Scripts, Prev: Executing Commands, Up: Basic Shell Features

3.8 Shell Scripts

A shell script is a text file containing shell commands. When such a
file is used as the first non-option argument when invoking Bash, and
neither the ‘-c’ nor ‘-s’ option is supplied (*note Invoking Bash:😃,
Bash reads and executes commands from the file, then exits. This mode
of operation creates a non-interactive shell. The shell first searches
for the file in the current directory, and looks in the directories in
‘$PATH’ if not found there.

When Bash runs a shell script, it sets the special parameter ‘0’ to
the name of the file, rather than the name of the shell, and the
positional parameters are set to the remaining arguments, if any are
given. If no additional arguments are supplied, the positional
parameters are unset.

A shell script may be made executable by using the ‘chmod’ command to
turn on the execute bit. When Bash finds such a file while searching
the ‘$PATH’ for a command, it spawns a subshell to execute it. In other
words, executing
filename ARGUMENTS
is equivalent to executing
bash filename ARGUMENTS

if ‘filename’ is an executable shell script. This subshell
reinitializes itself, so that the effect is as if a new shell had been
invoked to interpret the script, with the exception that the locations
of commands remembered by the parent (see the description of ‘hash’ in
*note Bourne Shell Builtins:😃 are retained by the child.

Most versions of Unix make this a part of the operating system’s
command execution mechanism. If the first line of a script begins with
the two characters ‘#!’, the remainder of the line specifies an
interpreter for the program and, depending on the operating system, one
or more optional arguments for that interpreter. Thus, you can specify
Bash, ‘awk’, Perl, or some other interpreter and write the rest of the
script file in that language.

The arguments to the interpreter consist of one or more optional
arguments following the interpreter name on the first line of the script
file, followed by the name of the script file, followed by the rest of
the arguments supplied to the script. The details of how the
interpreter line is split into an interpreter name and a set of
arguments vary across systems. Bash will perform this action on
operating systems that do not handle it themselves. Note that some
older versions of Unix limit the interpreter name and a single argument
to a maximum of 32 characters, so it’s not portable to assume that using
more than one argument will work.

Bash scripts often begin with ‘#! /bin/bash’ (assuming that Bash has
been installed in ‘/bin’), since this ensures that Bash will be used to
interpret the script, even if it is executed under another shell. It’s
a common idiom to use ‘env’ to find ‘bash’ even if it’s been installed
in another directory: ‘#!/usr/bin/env bash’ will find the first
occurrence of ‘bash’ in ‘$PATH’.

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Builtin Commands, Next: Shell Variables, Prev: Basic Shell Features, Up: Top

4 Shell Builtin Commands

---

• Menu:

• Bourne Shell Builtins:: Builtin commands inherited from the Bourne
  Shell.

• Bash Builtins:: Table of builtins specific to Bash.

• Modifying Shell Behavior:: Builtins to modify shell attributes and
  optional behavior.

• Special Builtins:: Builtin commands classified specially by
  POSIX.

Builtin commands are contained within the shell itself. When the name
of a builtin command is used as the first word of a simple command
(*note Simple Commands:😃, the shell executes the command directly,
without invoking another program. Builtin commands are necessary to
implement functionality impossible or inconvenient to obtain with
separate utilities.

This section briefly describes the builtins which Bash inherits from
the Bourne Shell, as well as the builtin commands which are unique to or
have been extended in Bash.

Several builtin commands are described in other chapters: builtin
commands which provide the Bash interface to the job control facilities
(*note Job Control Builtins:😃, the directory stack (*note Directory
Stack Builtins:😃, the command history (*note Bash History Builtins:😃,
and the programmable completion facilities (*note Programmable
Completion Builtins:😃.

Many of the builtins have been extended by POSIX or Bash.

Unless otherwise noted, each builtin command documented as accepting
options preceded by ‘-’ accepts ‘–’ to signify the end of the options.
The ‘:’, ‘true’, ‘false’, and ‘test’/‘[’ builtins do not accept options
and do not treat ‘–’ specially. The ‘exit’, ‘logout’, ‘return’,
‘break’, ‘continue’, ‘let’, and ‘shift’ builtins accept and process
arguments beginning with ‘-’ without requiring ‘–’. Other builtins
that accept arguments but are not specified as accepting options
interpret arguments beginning with ‘-’ as invalid options and require
‘–’ to prevent this interpretation.

File: bash.info, Node: Bourne Shell Builtins, Next: Bash Builtins, Up: Shell Builtin Commands

4.1 Bourne Shell Builtins

The following shell builtin commands are inherited from the Bourne
Shell. These commands are implemented as specified by the POSIX
standard.

‘: (a colon)’

[ARGUMENTS]

 Do nothing beyond expanding ARGUMENTS and performing redirections.
 The return status is zero.

‘. (a period)’
. FILENAME [ARGUMENTS]

 Read and execute commands from the FILENAME argument in the current
 shell context.  If FILENAME does not contain a slash, the 'PATH'
 variable is used to find FILENAME.  When Bash is not in POSIX mode,
 the current directory is searched if FILENAME is not found in
 '$PATH'.  If any ARGUMENTS are supplied, they become the positional
 parameters when FILENAME is executed.  Otherwise the positional
 parameters are unchanged.  If the '-T' option is enabled, 'source'
 inherits any trap on 'DEBUG'; if it is not, any 'DEBUG' trap string
 is saved and restored around the call to 'source', and 'source'
 unsets the 'DEBUG' trap while it executes.  If '-T' is not set, and
 the sourced file changes the 'DEBUG' trap, the new value is
 retained when 'source' completes.  The return status is the exit
 status of the last command executed, or zero if no commands are
 executed.  If FILENAME is not found, or cannot be read, the return
 status is non-zero.  This builtin is equivalent to 'source'.

‘break’
break [N]

 Exit from a 'for', 'while', 'until', or 'select' loop.  If N is
 supplied, the Nth enclosing loop is exited.  N must be greater than
 or equal to 1.  The return status is zero unless N is not greater
 than or equal to 1.

‘cd’
cd [-L|[-P [-e]] [-@] [DIRECTORY]

 Change the current working directory to DIRECTORY.  If DIRECTORY is
 not supplied, the value of the 'HOME' shell variable is used.  Any
 additional arguments following DIRECTORY are ignored.  If the shell
 variable 'CDPATH' exists, it is used as a search path: each
 directory name in 'CDPATH' is searched for DIRECTORY, with
 alternative directory names in 'CDPATH' separated by a colon (':').
 If DIRECTORY begins with a slash, 'CDPATH' is not used.

 The '-P' option means to not follow symbolic links: symbolic links
 are resolved while 'cd' is traversing DIRECTORY and before
 processing an instance of '..' in DIRECTORY.

 By default, or when the '-L' option is supplied, symbolic links in
 DIRECTORY are resolved after 'cd' processes an instance of '..' in
 DIRECTORY.

 If '..' appears in DIRECTORY, it is processed by removing the
 immediately preceding pathname component, back to a slash or the
 beginning of DIRECTORY.

 If the '-e' option is supplied with '-P' and the current working
 directory cannot be successfully determined after a successful
 directory change, 'cd' will return an unsuccessful status.

 On systems that support it, the '-@' option presents the extended
 attributes associated with a file as a directory.

 If DIRECTORY is '-', it is converted to '$OLDPWD' before the
 directory change is attempted.

 If a non-empty directory name from 'CDPATH' is used, or if '-' is
 the first argument, and the directory change is successful, the
 absolute pathname of the new working directory is written to the
 standard output.

 The return status is zero if the directory is successfully changed,
 non-zero otherwise.

‘continue’
continue [N]

 Resume the next iteration of an enclosing 'for', 'while', 'until',
 or 'select' loop.  If N is supplied, the execution of the Nth
 enclosing loop is resumed.  N must be greater than or equal to 1.
 The return status is zero unless N is not greater than or equal to
 1.

‘eval’
eval [ARGUMENTS]

 The arguments are concatenated together into a single command,
 which is then read and executed, and its exit status returned as
 the exit status of 'eval'.  If there are no arguments or only empty
 arguments, the return status is zero.

‘exec’
exec [-cl] [-a NAME] [COMMAND [ARGUMENTS]]

 If COMMAND is supplied, it replaces the shell without creating a
 new process.  If the '-l' option is supplied, the shell places a
 dash at the beginning of the zeroth argument passed to COMMAND.
 This is what the 'login' program does.  The '-c' option causes
 COMMAND to be executed with an empty environment.  If '-a' is
 supplied, the shell passes NAME as the zeroth argument to COMMAND.
 If COMMAND cannot be executed for some reason, a non-interactive
 shell exits, unless the 'execfail' shell option is enabled.  In
 that case, it returns failure.  An interactive shell returns
 failure if the file cannot be executed.  A subshell exits
 unconditionally if 'exec' fails.  If no COMMAND is specified,
 redirections may be used to affect the current shell environment.
 If there are no redirection errors, the return status is zero;
 otherwise the return status is non-zero.

‘exit’
exit [N]

 Exit the shell, returning a status of N to the shell's parent.  If
 N is omitted, the exit status is that of the last command executed.
 Any trap on 'EXIT' is executed before the shell terminates.

‘export’
export [-fn] [-p] [NAME[=VALUE]]

 Mark each NAME to be passed to child processes in the environment.
 If the '-f' option is supplied, the NAMEs refer to shell functions;
 otherwise the names refer to shell variables.  The '-n' option
 means to no longer mark each NAME for export.  If no NAMES are
 supplied, or if the '-p' option is given, a list of names of all
 exported variables is displayed.  The '-p' option displays output
 in a form that may be reused as input.  If a variable name is
 followed by =VALUE, the value of the variable is set to VALUE.

 The return status is zero unless an invalid option is supplied, one
 of the names is not a valid shell variable name, or '-f' is
 supplied with a name that is not a shell function.

‘getopts’
getopts OPTSTRING NAME [ARG …]

 'getopts' is used by shell scripts to parse positional parameters.
 OPTSTRING contains the option characters to be recognized; if a
 character is followed by a colon, the option is expected to have an
 argument, which should be separated from it by whitespace.  The
 colon (':') and question mark ('?') may not be used as option
 characters.  Each time it is invoked, 'getopts' places the next
 option in the shell variable NAME, initializing NAME if it does not
 exist, and the index of the next argument to be processed into the
 variable 'OPTIND'.  'OPTIND' is initialized to 1 each time the
 shell or a shell script is invoked.  When an option requires an
 argument, 'getopts' places that argument into the variable
 'OPTARG'.  The shell does not reset 'OPTIND' automatically; it must
 be manually reset between multiple calls to 'getopts' within the
 same shell invocation if a new set of parameters is to be used.

 When the end of options is encountered, 'getopts' exits with a
 return value greater than zero.  'OPTIND' is set to the index of
 the first non-option argument, and NAME is set to '?'.

 'getopts' normally parses the positional parameters, but if more
 arguments are supplied as ARG values, 'getopts' parses those
 instead.

 'getopts' can report errors in two ways.  If the first character of
 OPTSTRING is a colon, SILENT error reporting is used.  In normal
 operation, diagnostic messages are printed when invalid options or
 missing option arguments are encountered.  If the variable 'OPTERR'
 is set to 0, no error messages will be displayed, even if the first
 character of 'optstring' is not a colon.

 If an invalid option is seen, 'getopts' places '?' into NAME and,
 if not silent, prints an error message and unsets 'OPTARG'.  If
 'getopts' is silent, the option character found is placed in
 'OPTARG' and no diagnostic message is printed.

 If a required argument is not found, and 'getopts' is not silent, a
 question mark ('?') is placed in NAME, 'OPTARG' is unset, and a
 diagnostic message is printed.  If 'getopts' is silent, then a
 colon (':') is placed in NAME and 'OPTARG' is set to the option
 character found.

‘hash’
hash [-r] [-p FILENAME] [-dt] [NAME]

 Each time 'hash' is invoked, it remembers the full pathnames of the
 commands specified as NAME arguments, so they need not be searched
 for on subsequent invocations.  The commands are found by searching
 through the directories listed in '$PATH'.  Any
 previously-remembered pathname is discarded.  The '-p' option
 inhibits the path search, and FILENAME is used as the location of
 NAME.  The '-r' option causes the shell to forget all remembered
 locations.  The '-d' option causes the shell to forget the
 remembered location of each NAME.  If the '-t' option is supplied,
 the full pathname to which each NAME corresponds is printed.  If
 multiple NAME arguments are supplied with '-t', the NAME is printed
 before the hashed full pathname.  The '-l' option causes output to
 be displayed in a format that may be reused as input.  If no
 arguments are given, or if only '-l' is supplied, information about
 remembered commands is printed.  The return status is zero unless a
 NAME is not found or an invalid option is supplied.

‘pwd’
pwd [-LP]

 Print the absolute pathname of the current working directory.  If
 the '-P' option is supplied, the pathname printed will not contain
 symbolic links.  If the '-L' option is supplied, the pathname
 printed may contain symbolic links.  The return status is zero
 unless an error is encountered while determining the name of the
 current directory or an invalid option is supplied.

‘readonly’
readonly [-aAf] [-p] [NAME[=VALUE]] …

 Mark each NAME as readonly.  The values of these names may not be
 changed by subsequent assignment.  If the '-f' option is supplied,
 each NAME refers to a shell function.  The '-a' option means each
 NAME refers to an indexed array variable; the '-A' option means
 each NAME refers to an associative array variable.  If both options
 are supplied, '-A' takes precedence.  If no NAME arguments are
 given, or if the '-p' option is supplied, a list of all readonly
 names is printed.  The other options may be used to restrict the
 output to a subset of the set of readonly names.  The '-p' option
 causes output to be displayed in a format that may be reused as
 input.  If a variable name is followed by =VALUE, the value of the
 variable is set to VALUE.  The return status is zero unless an
 invalid option is supplied, one of the NAME arguments is not a
 valid shell variable or function name, or the '-f' option is
 supplied with a name that is not a shell function.

‘return’
return [N]

 Cause a shell function to stop executing and return the value N to
 its caller.  If N is not supplied, the return value is the exit
 status of the last command executed in the function.  If 'return'
 is executed by a trap handler, the last command used to determine
 the status is the last command executed before the trap handler.
 If 'return' is executed during a 'DEBUG' trap, the last command
 used to determine the status is the last command executed by the
 trap handler before 'return' was invoked.  'return' may also be
 used to terminate execution of a script being executed with the '.'
 ('source') builtin, returning either N or the exit status of the
 last command executed within the script as the exit status of the
 script.  If N is supplied, the return value is its least
 significant 8 bits.  Any command associated with the 'RETURN' trap
 is executed before execution resumes after the function or script.
 The return status is non-zero if 'return' is supplied a non-numeric
 argument or is used outside a function and not during the execution
 of a script by '.' or 'source'.

‘shift’
shift [N]

 Shift the positional parameters to the left by N.  The positional
 parameters from N+1 ... '$#' are renamed to '$1' ... '$#'-N.
 Parameters represented by the numbers '$#' down to '$#'-N+1 are
 unset.  N must be a non-negative number less than or equal to '$#'.
 If N is zero or greater than '$#', the positional parameters are
 not changed.  If N is not supplied, it is assumed to be 1.  The
 return status is zero unless N is greater than '$#' or less than
 zero, non-zero otherwise.

‘test’
‘[’
test EXPR

 Evaluate a conditional expression EXPR and return a status of 0
 (true) or 1 (false).  Each operator and operand must be a separate
 argument.  Expressions are composed of the primaries described
 below in *note Bash Conditional Expressions::.  'test' does not
 accept any options, nor does it accept and ignore an argument of
 '--' as signifying the end of options.

 When the '[' form is used, the last argument to the command must be
 a ']'.

 Expressions may be combined using the following operators, listed
 in decreasing order of precedence.  The evaluation depends on the
 number of arguments; see below.  Operator precedence is used when
 there are five or more arguments.

 '! EXPR'
      True if EXPR is false.

 '( EXPR )'
      Returns the value of EXPR.  This may be used to override the
      normal precedence of operators.

 'EXPR1 -a EXPR2'
      True if both EXPR1 and EXPR2 are true.

 'EXPR1 -o EXPR2'
      True if either EXPR1 or EXPR2 is true.

 The 'test' and '[' builtins evaluate conditional expressions using
 a set of rules based on the number of arguments.

 0 arguments
      The expression is false.

 1 argument
      The expression is true if, and only if, the argument is not
      null.

 2 arguments
      If the first argument is '!', the expression is true if and
      only if the second argument is null.  If the first argument is
      one of the unary conditional operators (*note Bash Conditional
      Expressions::), the expression is true if the unary test is
      true.  If the first argument is not a valid unary operator,
      the expression is false.

 3 arguments
      The following conditions are applied in the order listed.

        1. If the second argument is one of the binary conditional
           operators (*note Bash Conditional Expressions::), the
           result of the expression is the result of the binary test
           using the first and third arguments as operands.  The
           '-a' and '-o' operators are considered binary operators
           when there are three arguments.
        2. If the first argument is '!', the value is the negation
           of the two-argument test using the second and third
           arguments.
        3. If the first argument is exactly '(' and the third
           argument is exactly ')', the result is the one-argument
           test of the second argument.
        4. Otherwise, the expression is false.

 4 arguments
      If the first argument is '!', the result is the negation of
      the three-argument expression composed of the remaining
      arguments.  Otherwise, the expression is parsed and evaluated
      according to precedence using the rules listed above.

 5 or more arguments
      The expression is parsed and evaluated according to precedence
      using the rules listed above.

 When used with 'test' or '[', the '<' and '>' operators sort
 lexicographically using ASCII ordering.

‘times’
times

 Print out the user and system times used by the shell and its
 children.  The return status is zero.

‘trap’
trap [-lp] [ARG] [SIGSPEC …]

 The commands in ARG are to be read and executed when the shell
 receives signal SIGSPEC.  If ARG is absent (and there is a single
 SIGSPEC) or equal to '-', each specified signal's disposition is
 reset to the value it had when the shell was started.  If ARG is
 the null string, then the signal specified by each SIGSPEC is
 ignored by the shell and commands it invokes.  If ARG is not
 present and '-p' has been supplied, the shell displays the trap
 commands associated with each SIGSPEC.  If no arguments are
 supplied, or only '-p' is given, 'trap' prints the list of commands
 associated with each signal number in a form that may be reused as
 shell input.  The '-l' option causes the shell to print a list of
 signal names and their corresponding numbers.  Each SIGSPEC is
 either a signal name or a signal number.  Signal names are case
 insensitive and the 'SIG' prefix is optional.

 If a SIGSPEC is '0' or 'EXIT', ARG is executed when the shell
 exits.  If a SIGSPEC is 'DEBUG', the command ARG is executed before
 every simple command, 'for' command, 'case' command, 'select'
 command, every arithmetic 'for' command, and before the first
 command executes in a shell function.  Refer to the description of
 the 'extdebug' option to the 'shopt' builtin (*note The Shopt
 Builtin::) for details of its effect on the 'DEBUG' trap.  If a
 SIGSPEC is 'RETURN', the command ARG is executed each time a shell
 function or a script executed with the '.' or 'source' builtins
 finishes executing.

 If a SIGSPEC is 'ERR', the command ARG is executed whenever a
 pipeline (which may consist of a single simple command), a list, or
 a compound command returns a non-zero exit status, subject to the
 following conditions.  The 'ERR' trap is not executed if the failed
 command is part of the command list immediately following an
 'until' or 'while' keyword, part of the test following the 'if' or
 'elif' reserved words, part of a command executed in a '&&' or '||'
 list except the command following the final '&&' or '||', any
 command in a pipeline but the last, or if the command's return
 status is being inverted using '!'.  These are the same conditions
 obeyed by the 'errexit' ('-e') option.

 Signals ignored upon entry to the shell cannot be trapped or reset.
 Trapped signals that are not being ignored are reset to their
 original values in a subshell or subshell environment when one is
 created.

 The return status is zero unless a SIGSPEC does not specify a valid
 signal.

‘umask’
umask [-p] [-S] [MODE]

 Set the shell process's file creation mask to MODE.  If MODE begins
 with a digit, it is interpreted as an octal number; if not, it is
 interpreted as a symbolic mode mask similar to that accepted by the
 'chmod' command.  If MODE is omitted, the current value of the mask
 is printed.  If the '-S' option is supplied without a MODE
 argument, the mask is printed in a symbolic format.  If the '-p'
 option is supplied, and MODE is omitted, the output is in a form
 that may be reused as input.  The return status is zero if the mode
 is successfully changed or if no MODE argument is supplied, and
 non-zero otherwise.

 Note that when the mode is interpreted as an octal number, each
 number of the umask is subtracted from '7'.  Thus, a umask of '022'
 results in permissions of '755'.

‘unset’
unset [-fnv] [NAME]

 Remove each variable or function NAME.  If the '-v' option is
 given, each NAME refers to a shell variable and that variable is
 removed.  If the '-f' option is given, the NAMEs refer to shell
 functions, and the function definition is removed.  If the '-n'
 option is supplied, and NAME is a variable with the NAMEREF
 attribute, NAME will be unset rather than the variable it
 references.  '-n' has no effect if the '-f' option is supplied.  If
 no options are supplied, each NAME refers to a variable; if there
 is no variable by that name, a function with that name, if any, is
 unset.  Readonly variables and functions may not be unset.  Some
 shell variables lose their special behavior if they are unset; such
 behavior is noted in the description of the individual variables.
 The return status is zero unless a NAME is readonly.

File: bash.info, Node: Bash Builtins, Next: Modifying Shell Behavior, Prev: Bourne Shell Builtins, Up: Shell Builtin Commands

4.2 Bash Builtin Commands

This section describes builtin commands which are unique to or have been
extended in Bash. Some of these commands are specified in the POSIX
standard.

‘alias’
alias [-p] [NAME[=VALUE] …]

 Without arguments or with the '-p' option, 'alias' prints the list
 of aliases on the standard output in a form that allows them to be
 reused as input.  If arguments are supplied, an alias is defined
 for each NAME whose VALUE is given.  If no VALUE is given, the name
 and value of the alias is printed.  Aliases are described in *note
 Aliases::.

‘bind’
bind [-m KEYMAP] [-lpsvPSVX]
bind [-m KEYMAP] [-q FUNCTION] [-u FUNCTION] [-r KEYSEQ]
bind [-m KEYMAP] -f FILENAME
bind [-m KEYMAP] -x KEYSEQ:SHELL-COMMAND
bind [-m KEYMAP] KEYSEQ:FUNCTION-NAME
bind [-m KEYMAP] KEYSEQ:READLINE-COMMAND

 Display current Readline (*note Command Line Editing::) key and
 function bindings, bind a key sequence to a Readline function or
 macro, or set a Readline variable.  Each non-option argument is a
 command as it would appear in a Readline initialization file (*note
 Readline Init File::), but each binding or command must be passed
 as a separate argument; e.g., '"\C-x\C-r":re-read-init-file'.

 Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:

 '-m KEYMAP'
      Use KEYMAP as the keymap to be affected by the subsequent
      bindings.  Acceptable KEYMAP names are 'emacs',
      'emacs-standard', 'emacs-meta', 'emacs-ctlx', 'vi', 'vi-move',
      'vi-command', and 'vi-insert'.  'vi' is equivalent to
      'vi-command' ('vi-move' is also a synonym); 'emacs' is
      equivalent to 'emacs-standard'.

 '-l'
      List the names of all Readline functions.

 '-p'
      Display Readline function names and bindings in such a way
      that they can be used as input or in a Readline initialization
      file.

 '-P'
      List current Readline function names and bindings.

 '-v'
      Display Readline variable names and values in such a way that
      they can be used as input or in a Readline initialization
      file.

 '-V'
      List current Readline variable names and values.

 '-s'
      Display Readline key sequences bound to macros and the strings
      they output in such a way that they can be used as input or in
      a Readline initialization file.

 '-S'
      Display Readline key sequences bound to macros and the strings
      they output.

 '-f FILENAME'
      Read key bindings from FILENAME.

 '-q FUNCTION'
      Query about which keys invoke the named FUNCTION.

 '-u FUNCTION'
      Unbind all keys bound to the named FUNCTION.

 '-r KEYSEQ'
      Remove any current binding for KEYSEQ.

 '-x KEYSEQ:SHELL-COMMAND'
      Cause SHELL-COMMAND to be executed whenever KEYSEQ is entered.
      When SHELL-COMMAND is executed, the shell sets the
      'READLINE_LINE' variable to the contents of the Readline line
      buffer and the 'READLINE_POINT' and 'READLINE_MARK' variables
      to the current location of the insertion point and the saved
      insertion point (the MARK), respectively.  If the executed
      command changes the value of any of 'READLINE_LINE',
      'READLINE_POINT', or 'READLINE_MARK', those new values will be
      reflected in the editing state.

 '-X'
      List all key sequences bound to shell commands and the
      associated commands in a format that can be reused as input.

 The return status is zero unless an invalid option is supplied or
 an error occurs.

‘builtin’
builtin [SHELL-BUILTIN [ARGS]]

 Run a shell builtin, passing it ARGS, and return its exit status.
 This is useful when defining a shell function with the same name as
 a shell builtin, retaining the functionality of the builtin within
 the function.  The return status is non-zero if SHELL-BUILTIN is
 not a shell builtin command.

‘caller’
caller [EXPR]

 Returns the context of any active subroutine call (a shell function
 or a script executed with the '.' or 'source' builtins).

 Without EXPR, 'caller' displays the line number and source filename
 of the current subroutine call.  If a non-negative integer is
 supplied as EXPR, 'caller' displays the line number, subroutine
 name, and source file corresponding to that position in the current
 execution call stack.  This extra information may be used, for
 example, to print a stack trace.  The current frame is frame 0.

 The return value is 0 unless the shell is not executing a
 subroutine call or EXPR does not correspond to a valid position in
 the call stack.

‘command’
command [-pVv] COMMAND [ARGUMENTS …]

 Runs COMMAND with ARGUMENTS ignoring any shell function named
 COMMAND.  Only shell builtin commands or commands found by
 searching the 'PATH' are executed.  If there is a shell function
 named 'ls', running 'command ls' within the function will execute
 the external command 'ls' instead of calling the function
 recursively.  The '-p' option means to use a default value for
 'PATH' that is guaranteed to find all of the standard utilities.
 The return status in this case is 127 if COMMAND cannot be found or
 an error occurred, and the exit status of COMMAND otherwise.

 If either the '-V' or '-v' option is supplied, a description of
 COMMAND is printed.  The '-v' option causes a single word
 indicating the command or file name used to invoke COMMAND to be
 displayed; the '-V' option produces a more verbose description.  In
 this case, the return status is zero if COMMAND is found, and
 non-zero if not.

‘declare’
declare [-aAfFgiIlnrtux] [-p] [NAME[=VALUE] …]

 Declare variables and give them attributes.  If no NAMEs are given,
 then display the values of variables instead.

 The '-p' option will display the attributes and values of each
 NAME.  When '-p' is used with NAME arguments, additional options,
 other than '-f' and '-F', are ignored.

 When '-p' is supplied without NAME arguments, 'declare' will
 display the attributes and values of all variables having the
 attributes specified by the additional options.  If no other
 options are supplied with '-p', 'declare' will display the
 attributes and values of all shell variables.  The '-f' option will
 restrict the display to shell functions.

 The '-F' option inhibits the display of function definitions; only
 the function name and attributes are printed.  If the 'extdebug'
 shell option is enabled using 'shopt' (*note The Shopt Builtin::),
 the source file name and line number where each NAME is defined are
 displayed as well.  '-F' implies '-f'.

 The '-g' option forces variables to be created or modified at the
 global scope, even when 'declare' is executed in a shell function.
 It is ignored in all other cases.

 The '-I' option causes local variables to inherit the attributes
 (except the NAMEREF attribute) and value of any existing variable
 with the same NAME at a surrounding scope.  If there is no existing
 variable, the local variable is initially unset.

 The following options can be used to restrict output to variables
 with the specified attributes or to give variables attributes:

 '-a'
      Each NAME is an indexed array variable (*note Arrays::).

 '-A'
      Each NAME is an associative array variable (*note Arrays::).

 '-f'
      Use function names only.

 '-i'
      The variable is to be treated as an integer; arithmetic
      evaluation (*note Shell Arithmetic::) is performed when the
      variable is assigned a value.

 '-l'
      When the variable is assigned a value, all upper-case
      characters are converted to lower-case.  The upper-case
      attribute is disabled.

 '-n'
      Give each NAME the NAMEREF attribute, making it a name
      reference to another variable.  That other variable is defined
      by the value of NAME.  All references, assignments, and
      attribute modifications to NAME, except for those using or
      changing the '-n' attribute itself, are performed on the
      variable referenced by NAME's value.  The nameref attribute
      cannot be applied to array variables.

 '-r'
      Make NAMEs readonly.  These names cannot then be assigned
      values by subsequent assignment statements or unset.

 '-t'
      Give each NAME the 'trace' attribute.  Traced functions
      inherit the 'DEBUG' and 'RETURN' traps from the calling shell.
      The trace attribute has no special meaning for variables.

 '-u'
      When the variable is assigned a value, all lower-case
      characters are converted to upper-case.  The lower-case
      attribute is disabled.

 '-x'
      Mark each NAME for export to subsequent commands via the
      environment.

 Using '+' instead of '-' turns off the attribute instead, with the
 exceptions that '+a' and '+A' may not be used to destroy array
 variables and '+r' will not remove the readonly attribute.  When
 used in a function, 'declare' makes each NAME local, as with the
 'local' command, unless the '-g' option is used.  If a variable
 name is followed by =VALUE, the value of the variable is set to
 VALUE.

 When using '-a' or '-A' and the compound assignment syntax to
 create array variables, additional attributes do not take effect
 until subsequent assignments.

 The return status is zero unless an invalid option is encountered,
 an attempt is made to define a function using '-f foo=bar', an
 attempt is made to assign a value to a readonly variable, an
 attempt is made to assign a value to an array variable without
 using the compound assignment syntax (*note Arrays::), one of the
 NAMES is not a valid shell variable name, an attempt is made to
 turn off readonly status for a readonly variable, an attempt is
 made to turn off array status for an array variable, or an attempt
 is made to display a non-existent function with '-f'.

‘echo’
echo [-neE] [ARG …]

 Output the ARGs, separated by spaces, terminated with a newline.
 The return status is 0 unless a write error occurs.  If '-n' is
 specified, the trailing newline is suppressed.  If the '-e' option
 is given, interpretation of the following backslash-escaped
 characters is enabled.  The '-E' option disables the interpretation
 of these escape characters, even on systems where they are
 interpreted by default.  The 'xpg_echo' shell option may be used to
 dynamically determine whether or not 'echo' expands these escape
 characters by default.  'echo' does not interpret '--' to mean the
 end of options.

 'echo' interprets the following escape sequences:
 '\a'
      alert (bell)
 '\b'
      backspace
 '\c'
      suppress further output
 '\e'
 '\E'
      escape
 '\f'
      form feed
 '\n'
      new line
 '\r'
      carriage return
 '\t'
      horizontal tab
 '\v'
      vertical tab
 '\\'
      backslash
 '\0NNN'
      the eight-bit character whose value is the octal value NNN
      (zero to three octal digits)
 '\xHH'
      the eight-bit character whose value is the hexadecimal value
      HH (one or two hex digits)
 '\uHHHH'
      the Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the
      hexadecimal value HHHH (one to four hex digits)
 '\UHHHHHHHH'
      the Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the
      hexadecimal value HHHHHHHH (one to eight hex digits)

‘enable’
enable [-a] [-dnps] [-f FILENAME] [NAME …]

 Enable and disable builtin shell commands.  Disabling a builtin
 allows a disk command which has the same name as a shell builtin to
 be executed without specifying a full pathname, even though the
 shell normally searches for builtins before disk commands.  If '-n'
 is used, the NAMEs become disabled.  Otherwise NAMEs are enabled.
 For example, to use the 'test' binary found via '$PATH' instead of
 the shell builtin version, type 'enable -n test'.

 If the '-p' option is supplied, or no NAME arguments appear, a list
 of shell builtins is printed.  With no other arguments, the list
 consists of all enabled shell builtins.  The '-a' option means to
 list each builtin with an indication of whether or not it is
 enabled.

 The '-f' option means to load the new builtin command NAME from
 shared object FILENAME, on systems that support dynamic loading.
 The '-d' option will delete a builtin loaded with '-f'.

 If there are no options, a list of the shell builtins is displayed.
 The '-s' option restricts 'enable' to the POSIX special builtins.
 If '-s' is used with '-f', the new builtin becomes a special
 builtin (*note Special Builtins::).

 The return status is zero unless a NAME is not a shell builtin or
 there is an error loading a new builtin from a shared object.

‘help’
help [-dms] [PATTERN]

 Display helpful information about builtin commands.  If PATTERN is
 specified, 'help' gives detailed help on all commands matching
 PATTERN, otherwise a list of the builtins is printed.

 Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:

 '-d'
      Display a short description of each PATTERN
 '-m'
      Display the description of each PATTERN in a manpage-like
      format
 '-s'
      Display only a short usage synopsis for each PATTERN

 The return status is zero unless no command matches PATTERN.

‘let’
let EXPRESSION [EXPRESSION …]

 The 'let' builtin allows arithmetic to be performed on shell
 variables.  Each EXPRESSION is evaluated according to the rules
 given below in *note Shell Arithmetic::.  If the last EXPRESSION
 evaluates to 0, 'let' returns 1; otherwise 0 is returned.

‘local’
local [OPTION] NAME[=VALUE] …

 For each argument, a local variable named NAME is created, and
 assigned VALUE.  The OPTION can be any of the options accepted by
 'declare'.  'local' can only be used within a function; it makes
 the variable NAME have a visible scope restricted to that function
 and its children.  If NAME is '-', the set of shell options is made
 local to the function in which 'local' is invoked: shell options
 changed using the 'set' builtin inside the function are restored to
 their original values when the function returns.  The restore is
 effected as if a series of 'set' commands were executed to restore
 the values that were in place before the function.  The return
 status is zero unless 'local' is used outside a function, an
 invalid NAME is supplied, or NAME is a readonly variable.

‘logout’
logout [N]

 Exit a login shell, returning a status of N to the shell's parent.

‘mapfile’
mapfile [-d DELIM] [-n COUNT] [-O ORIGIN] [-s COUNT]
[-t] [-u FD] [-C CALLBACK] [-c QUANTUM] [ARRAY]

 Read lines from the standard input into the indexed array variable
 ARRAY, or from file descriptor FD if the '-u' option is supplied.
 The variable 'MAPFILE' is the default ARRAY.  Options, if supplied,
 have the following meanings:

 '-d'
      The first character of DELIM is used to terminate each input
      line, rather than newline.  If DELIM is the empty string,
      'mapfile' will terminate a line when it reads a NUL character.
 '-n'
      Copy at most COUNT lines.  If COUNT is 0, all lines are
      copied.
 '-O'
      Begin assigning to ARRAY at index ORIGIN.  The default index
      is 0.
 '-s'
      Discard the first COUNT lines read.
 '-t'
      Remove a trailing DELIM (default newline) from each line read.
 '-u'
      Read lines from file descriptor FD instead of the standard
      input.
 '-C'
      Evaluate CALLBACK each time QUANTUM lines are read.  The '-c'
      option specifies QUANTUM.
 '-c'
      Specify the number of lines read between each call to
      CALLBACK.

 If '-C' is specified without '-c', the default quantum is 5000.
 When CALLBACK is evaluated, it is supplied the index of the next
 array element to be assigned and the line to be assigned to that
 element as additional arguments.  CALLBACK is evaluated after the
 line is read but before the array element is assigned.

 If not supplied with an explicit origin, 'mapfile' will clear ARRAY
 before assigning to it.

 'mapfile' returns successfully unless an invalid option or option
 argument is supplied, ARRAY is invalid or unassignable, or ARRAY is
 not an indexed array.

‘printf’
printf [-v VAR] FORMAT [ARGUMENTS]

 Write the formatted ARGUMENTS to the standard output under the
 control of the FORMAT.  The '-v' option causes the output to be
 assigned to the variable VAR rather than being printed to the
 standard output.

 The FORMAT is a character string which contains three types of
 objects: plain characters, which are simply copied to standard
 output, character escape sequences, which are converted and copied
 to the standard output, and format specifications, each of which
 causes printing of the next successive ARGUMENT.  In addition to
 the standard 'printf(1)' formats, 'printf' interprets the following
 extensions:

 '%b'
      Causes 'printf' to expand backslash escape sequences in the
      corresponding ARGUMENT in the same way as 'echo -e' (*note
      Bash Builtins::).
 '%q'
      Causes 'printf' to output the corresponding ARGUMENT in a
      format that can be reused as shell input.
 '%(DATEFMT)T'
      Causes 'printf' to output the date-time string resulting from
      using DATEFMT as a format string for 'strftime'(3).  The
      corresponding ARGUMENT is an integer representing the number
      of seconds since the epoch.  Two special argument values may
      be used: -1 represents the current time, and -2 represents the
      time the shell was invoked.  If no argument is specified,
      conversion behaves as if -1 had been given.  This is an
      exception to the usual 'printf' behavior.

 The %b, %q, and %T directives all use the field width and precision
 arguments from the format specification and write that many bytes
 from (or use that wide a field for) the expanded argument, which
 usually contains more characters than the original.

 Arguments to non-string format specifiers are treated as C language
 constants, except that a leading plus or minus sign is allowed, and
 if the leading character is a single or double quote, the value is
 the ASCII value of the following character.

 The FORMAT is reused as necessary to consume all of the ARGUMENTS.
 If the FORMAT requires more ARGUMENTS than are supplied, the extra
 format specifications behave as if a zero value or null string, as
 appropriate, had been supplied.  The return value is zero on
 success, non-zero on failure.

‘read’
read [-ers] [-a ANAME] [-d DELIM] [-i TEXT] [-n NCHARS]
[-N NCHARS] [-p PROMPT] [-t TIMEOUT] [-u FD] [NAME …]

 One line is read from the standard input, or from the file
 descriptor FD supplied as an argument to the '-u' option, split
 into words as described above in *note Word Splitting::, and the
 first word is assigned to the first NAME, the second word to the
 second NAME, and so on.  If there are more words than names, the
 remaining words and their intervening delimiters are assigned to
 the last NAME.  If there are fewer words read from the input stream
 than names, the remaining names are assigned empty values.  The
 characters in the value of the 'IFS' variable are used to split the
 line into words using the same rules the shell uses for expansion
 (described above in *note Word Splitting::).  The backslash
 character '\' may be used to remove any special meaning for the
 next character read and for line continuation.

 Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:

 '-a ANAME'
      The words are assigned to sequential indices of the array
      variable ANAME, starting at 0.  All elements are removed from
      ANAME before the assignment.  Other NAME arguments are
      ignored.

 '-d DELIM'
      The first character of DELIM is used to terminate the input
      line, rather than newline.  If DELIM is the empty string,
      'read' will terminate a line when it reads a NUL character.

 '-e'
      Readline (*note Command Line Editing::) is used to obtain the
      line.  Readline uses the current (or default, if line editing
      was not previously active) editing settings, but uses
      Readline's default filename completion.

 '-i TEXT'
      If Readline is being used to read the line, TEXT is placed
      into the editing buffer before editing begins.

 '-n NCHARS'
      'read' returns after reading NCHARS characters rather than
      waiting for a complete line of input, but honors a delimiter
      if fewer than NCHARS characters are read before the delimiter.

 '-N NCHARS'
      'read' returns after reading exactly NCHARS characters rather
      than waiting for a complete line of input, unless EOF is
      encountered or 'read' times out.  Delimiter characters
      encountered in the input are not treated specially and do not
      cause 'read' to return until NCHARS characters are read.  The
      result is not split on the characters in 'IFS'; the intent is
      that the variable is assigned exactly the characters read
      (with the exception of backslash; see the '-r' option below).

 '-p PROMPT'
      Display PROMPT, without a trailing newline, before attempting
      to read any input.  The prompt is displayed only if input is
      coming from a terminal.

 '-r'
      If this option is given, backslash does not act as an escape
      character.  The backslash is considered to be part of the
      line.  In particular, a backslash-newline pair may not then be
      used as a line continuation.

 '-s'
      Silent mode.  If input is coming from a terminal, characters
      are not echoed.

 '-t TIMEOUT'
      Cause 'read' to time out and return failure if a complete line
      of input (or a specified number of characters) is not read
      within TIMEOUT seconds.  TIMEOUT may be a decimal number with
      a fractional portion following the decimal point.  This option
      is only effective if 'read' is reading input from a terminal,
      pipe, or other special file; it has no effect when reading
      from regular files.  If 'read' times out, 'read' saves any
      partial input read into the specified variable NAME.  If
      TIMEOUT is 0, 'read' returns immediately, without trying to
      read any data.  The exit status is 0 if input is available on
      the specified file descriptor, non-zero otherwise.  The exit
      status is greater than 128 if the timeout is exceeded.

 '-u FD'
      Read input from file descriptor FD.

 If no NAMEs are supplied, the line read, without the ending
 delimiter but otherwise unmodified, is assigned to the variable
 'REPLY'.  The exit status is zero, unless end-of-file is
 encountered, 'read' times out (in which case the status is greater
 than 128), a variable assignment error (such as assigning to a
 readonly variable) occurs, or an invalid file descriptor is
 supplied as the argument to '-u'.

‘readarray’
readarray [-d DELIM] [-n COUNT] [-O ORIGIN] [-s COUNT]
[-t] [-u FD] [-C CALLBACK] [-c QUANTUM] [ARRAY]

 Read lines from the standard input into the indexed array variable
 ARRAY, or from file descriptor FD if the '-u' option is supplied.

 A synonym for 'mapfile'.

‘source’
source FILENAME

 A synonym for '.' (*note Bourne Shell Builtins::).

‘type’
type [-afptP] [NAME …]

 For each NAME, indicate how it would be interpreted if used as a
 command name.

 If the '-t' option is used, 'type' prints a single word which is
 one of 'alias', 'function', 'builtin', 'file' or 'keyword', if NAME
 is an alias, shell function, shell builtin, disk file, or shell
 reserved word, respectively.  If the NAME is not found, then
 nothing is printed, and 'type' returns a failure status.

 If the '-p' option is used, 'type' either returns the name of the
 disk file that would be executed, or nothing if '-t' would not
 return 'file'.

 The '-P' option forces a path search for each NAME, even if '-t'
 would not return 'file'.

 If a command is hashed, '-p' and '-P' print the hashed value, which
 is not necessarily the file that appears first in '$PATH'.

 If the '-a' option is used, 'type' returns all of the places that
 contain an executable named FILE.  This includes aliases and
 functions, if and only if the '-p' option is not also used.

 If the '-f' option is used, 'type' does not attempt to find shell
 functions, as with the 'command' builtin.

 The return status is zero if all of the NAMES are found, non-zero
 if any are not found.

‘typeset’
typeset [-afFgrxilnrtux] [-p] [NAME[=VALUE] …]

 The 'typeset' command is supplied for compatibility with the Korn
 shell.  It is a synonym for the 'declare' builtin command.

‘ulimit’
ulimit [-HS] -a
ulimit [-HS] [-bcdefiklmnpqrstuvxPRT] [LIMIT]

 'ulimit' provides control over the resources available to processes
 started by the shell, on systems that allow such control.  If an
 option is given, it is interpreted as follows:

 '-S'
      Change and report the soft limit associated with a resource.

 '-H'
      Change and report the hard limit associated with a resource.

 '-a'
      All current limits are reported; no limits are set.

 '-b'
      The maximum socket buffer size.

 '-c'
      The maximum size of core files created.

 '-d'
      The maximum size of a process's data segment.

 '-e'
      The maximum scheduling priority ("nice").

 '-f'
      The maximum size of files written by the shell and its
      children.

 '-i'
      The maximum number of pending signals.

 '-k'
      The maximum number of kqueues that may be allocated.

 '-l'
      The maximum size that may be locked into memory.

 '-m'
      The maximum resident set size (many systems do not honor this
      limit).

 '-n'
      The maximum number of open file descriptors (most systems do
      not allow this value to be set).

 '-p'
      The pipe buffer size.

 '-q'
      The maximum number of bytes in POSIX message queues.

 '-r'
      The maximum real-time scheduling priority.

 '-s'
      The maximum stack size.

 '-t'
      The maximum amount of cpu time in seconds.

 '-u'
      The maximum number of processes available to a single user.

 '-v'
      The maximum amount of virtual memory available to the shell,
      and, on some systems, to its children.

 '-x'
      The maximum number of file locks.

 '-P'
      The maximum number of pseudoterminals.

 '-R'
      The maximum time a real-time process can run before blocking,
      in microseconds.

 '-T'
      The maximum number of threads.

 If LIMIT is given, and the '-a' option is not used, LIMIT is the
 new value of the specified resource.  The special LIMIT values
 'hard', 'soft', and 'unlimited' stand for the current hard limit,
 the current soft limit, and no limit, respectively.  A hard limit
 cannot be increased by a non-root user once it is set; a soft limit
 may be increased up to the value of the hard limit.  Otherwise, the
 current value of the soft limit for the specified resource is
 printed, unless the '-H' option is supplied.  When more than one
 resource is specified, the limit name and unit, if appropriate, are
 printed before the value.  When setting new limits, if neither '-H'
 nor '-S' is supplied, both the hard and soft limits are set.  If no
 option is given, then '-f' is assumed.  Values are in 1024-byte
 increments, except for '-t', which is in seconds; '-R', which is in
 microseconds; '-p', which is in units of 512-byte blocks; '-P',
 '-T', '-b', '-k', '-n' and '-u', which are unscaled values; and,
 when in POSIX Mode (*note Bash POSIX Mode::), '-c' and '-f', which
 are in 512-byte increments.

 The return status is zero unless an invalid option or argument is
 supplied, or an error occurs while setting a new limit.

‘unalias’
unalias [-a] [NAME … ]

 Remove each NAME from the list of aliases.  If '-a' is supplied,
 all aliases are removed.  Aliases are described in *note Aliases::.

File: bash.info, Node: Modifying Shell Behavior, Next: Special Builtins, Prev: Bash Builtins, Up: Shell Builtin Commands

4.3 Modifying Shell Behavior

• Menu:

• The Set Builtin:: Change the values of shell attributes and
  positional parameters.

• The Shopt Builtin:: Modify shell optional behavior.

File: bash.info, Node: The Set Builtin, Next: The Shopt Builtin, Up: Modifying Shell Behavior

4.3.1 The Set Builtin

This builtin is so complicated that it deserves its own section. ‘set’
allows you to change the values of shell options and set the positional
parameters, or to display the names and values of shell variables.

‘set’
set [–abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT] [-o OPTION-NAME] [ARGUMENT …]
set [+abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT] [+o OPTION-NAME] [ARGUMENT …]

 If no options or arguments are supplied, 'set' displays the names
 and values of all shell variables and functions, sorted according
 to the current locale, in a format that may be reused as input for
 setting or resetting the currently-set variables.  Read-only
 variables cannot be reset.  In POSIX mode, only shell variables are
 listed.

 When options are supplied, they set or unset shell attributes.
 Options, if specified, have the following meanings:

 '-a'
      Each variable or function that is created or modified is given
      the export attribute and marked for export to the environment
      of subsequent commands.

 '-b'
      Cause the status of terminated background jobs to be reported
      immediately, rather than before printing the next primary
      prompt.

 '-e'
      Exit immediately if a pipeline (*note Pipelines::), which may
      consist of a single simple command (*note Simple Commands::),
      a list (*note Lists::), or a compound command (*note Compound
      Commands::) returns a non-zero status.  The shell does not
      exit if the command that fails is part of the command list
      immediately following a 'while' or 'until' keyword, part of
      the test in an 'if' statement, part of any command executed in
      a '&&' or '||' list except the command following the final
      '&&' or '||', any command in a pipeline but the last, or if
      the command's return status is being inverted with '!'.  If a
      compound command other than a subshell returns a non-zero
      status because a command failed while '-e' was being ignored,
      the shell does not exit.  A trap on 'ERR', if set, is executed
      before the shell exits.

      This option applies to the shell environment and each subshell
      environment separately (*note Command Execution
      Environment::), and may cause subshells to exit before
      executing all the commands in the subshell.

      If a compound command or shell function executes in a context
      where '-e' is being ignored, none of the commands executed
      within the compound command or function body will be affected
      by the '-e' setting, even if '-e' is set and a command returns
      a failure status.  If a compound command or shell function
      sets '-e' while executing in a context where '-e' is ignored,
      that setting will not have any effect until the compound
      command or the command containing the function call completes.

 '-f'
      Disable filename expansion (globbing).

 '-h'
      Locate and remember (hash) commands as they are looked up for
      execution.  This option is enabled by default.

 '-k'
      All arguments in the form of assignment statements are placed
      in the environment for a command, not just those that precede
      the command name.

 '-m'
      Job control is enabled (*note Job Control::).  All processes
      run in a separate process group.  When a background job
      completes, the shell prints a line containing its exit status.

 '-n'
      Read commands but do not execute them.  This may be used to
      check a script for syntax errors.  This option is ignored by
      interactive shells.

 '-o OPTION-NAME'

      Set the option corresponding to OPTION-NAME:

      'allexport'
           Same as '-a'.

      'braceexpand'
           Same as '-B'.

      'emacs'
           Use an 'emacs'-style line editing interface (*note
           Command Line Editing::).  This also affects the editing
           interface used for 'read -e'.

      'errexit'
           Same as '-e'.

      'errtrace'
           Same as '-E'.

      'functrace'
           Same as '-T'.

      'hashall'
           Same as '-h'.

      'histexpand'
           Same as '-H'.

      'history'
           Enable command history, as described in *note Bash
           History Facilities::.  This option is on by default in
           interactive shells.

      'ignoreeof'
           An interactive shell will not exit upon reading EOF.

      'keyword'
           Same as '-k'.

      'monitor'
           Same as '-m'.

      'noclobber'
           Same as '-C'.

      'noexec'
           Same as '-n'.

      'noglob'
           Same as '-f'.

      'nolog'
           Currently ignored.

      'notify'
           Same as '-b'.

      'nounset'
           Same as '-u'.

      'onecmd'
           Same as '-t'.

      'physical'
           Same as '-P'.

      'pipefail'
           If set, the return value of a pipeline is the value of
           the last (rightmost) command to exit with a non-zero
           status, or zero if all commands in the pipeline exit
           successfully.  This option is disabled by default.

      'posix'
           Change the behavior of Bash where the default operation
           differs from the POSIX standard to match the standard
           (*note Bash POSIX Mode::).  This is intended to make Bash
           behave as a strict superset of that standard.

      'privileged'
           Same as '-p'.

      'verbose'
           Same as '-v'.

      'vi'
           Use a 'vi'-style line editing interface.  This also
           affects the editing interface used for 'read -e'.

      'xtrace'
           Same as '-x'.

 '-p'
      Turn on privileged mode.  In this mode, the '$BASH_ENV' and
      '$ENV' files are not processed, shell functions are not
      inherited from the environment, and the 'SHELLOPTS',
      'BASHOPTS', 'CDPATH' and 'GLOBIGNORE' variables, if they
      appear in the environment, are ignored.  If the shell is
      started with the effective user (group) id not equal to the
      real user (group) id, and the '-p' option is not supplied,
      these actions are taken and the effective user id is set to
      the real user id.  If the '-p' option is supplied at startup,
      the effective user id is not reset.  Turning this option off
      causes the effective user and group ids to be set to the real
      user and group ids.

 '-t'
      Exit after reading and executing one command.

 '-u'
      Treat unset variables and parameters other than the special
      parameters '@' or '*' as an error when performing parameter
      expansion.  An error message will be written to the standard
      error, and a non-interactive shell will exit.

 '-v'
      Print shell input lines as they are read.

 '-x'
      Print a trace of simple commands, 'for' commands, 'case'
      commands, 'select' commands, and arithmetic 'for' commands and
      their arguments or associated word lists after they are
      expanded and before they are executed.  The value of the 'PS4'
      variable is expanded and the resultant value is printed before
      the command and its expanded arguments.

 '-B'
      The shell will perform brace expansion (*note Brace
      Expansion::).  This option is on by default.

 '-C'
      Prevent output redirection using '>', '>&', and '<>' from
      overwriting existing files.

 '-E'
      If set, any trap on 'ERR' is inherited by shell functions,
      command substitutions, and commands executed in a subshell
      environment.  The 'ERR' trap is normally not inherited in such
      cases.

 '-H'
      Enable '!' style history substitution (*note History
      Interaction::).  This option is on by default for interactive
      shells.

 '-P'
      If set, do not resolve symbolic links when performing commands
      such as 'cd' which change the current directory.  The physical
      directory is used instead.  By default, Bash follows the
      logical chain of directories when performing commands which
      change the current directory.

      For example, if '/usr/sys' is a symbolic link to
      '/usr/local/sys' then:
           $ cd /usr/sys; echo $PWD
           /usr/sys
           $ cd ..; pwd
           /usr

      If 'set -P' is on, then:
           $ cd /usr/sys; echo $PWD
           /usr/local/sys
           $ cd ..; pwd
           /usr/local

 '-T'
      If set, any trap on 'DEBUG' and 'RETURN' are inherited by
      shell functions, command substitutions, and commands executed
      in a subshell environment.  The 'DEBUG' and 'RETURN' traps are
      normally not inherited in such cases.

 '--'
      If no arguments follow this option, then the positional
      parameters are unset.  Otherwise, the positional parameters
      are set to the ARGUMENTS, even if some of them begin with a
      '-'.

 '-'
      Signal the end of options, cause all remaining ARGUMENTS to be
      assigned to the positional parameters.  The '-x' and '-v'
      options are turned off.  If there are no arguments, the
      positional parameters remain unchanged.

 Using '+' rather than '-' causes these options to be turned off.
 The options can also be used upon invocation of the shell.  The
 current set of options may be found in '$-'.

 The remaining N ARGUMENTS are positional parameters and are
 assigned, in order, to '$1', '$2', ... '$N'.  The special parameter
 '#' is set to N.

 The return status is always zero unless an invalid option is
 supplied.

File: bash.info, Node: The Shopt Builtin, Prev: The Set Builtin, Up: Modifying Shell Behavior

4.3.2 The Shopt Builtin

This builtin allows you to change additional shell optional behavior.

‘shopt’
shopt [-pqsu] [-o] [OPTNAME …]

 Toggle the values of settings controlling optional shell behavior.
 The settings can be either those listed below, or, if the '-o'
 option is used, those available with the '-o' option to the 'set'
 builtin command (*note The Set Builtin::).  With no options, or
 with the '-p' option, a list of all settable options is displayed,
 with an indication of whether or not each is set; if OPTNAMES are
 supplied, the output is restricted to those options.  The '-p'
 option causes output to be displayed in a form that may be reused
 as input.  Other options have the following meanings:

 '-s'
      Enable (set) each OPTNAME.

 '-u'
      Disable (unset) each OPTNAME.

 '-q'
      Suppresses normal output; the return status indicates whether
      the OPTNAME is set or unset.  If multiple OPTNAME arguments
      are given with '-q', the return status is zero if all OPTNAMES
      are enabled; non-zero otherwise.

 '-o'
      Restricts the values of OPTNAME to be those defined for the
      '-o' option to the 'set' builtin (*note The Set Builtin::).

 If either '-s' or '-u' is used with no OPTNAME arguments, 'shopt'
 shows only those options which are set or unset, respectively.

 Unless otherwise noted, the 'shopt' options are disabled (off) by
 default.

 The return status when listing options is zero if all OPTNAMES are
 enabled, non-zero otherwise.  When setting or unsetting options,
 the return status is zero unless an OPTNAME is not a valid shell
 option.

 The list of 'shopt' options is:

 'assoc_expand_once'
      If set, the shell suppresses multiple evaluation of
      associative array subscripts during arithmetic expression
      evaluation, while executing builtins that can perform variable
      assignments, and while executing builtins that perform array
      dereferencing.

 'autocd'
      If set, a command name that is the name of a directory is
      executed as if it were the argument to the 'cd' command.  This
      option is only used by interactive shells.

 'cdable_vars'
      If this is set, an argument to the 'cd' builtin command that
      is not a directory is assumed to be the name of a variable
      whose value is the directory to change to.

 'cdspell'
      If set, minor errors in the spelling of a directory component
      in a 'cd' command will be corrected.  The errors checked for
      are transposed characters, a missing character, and a
      character too many.  If a correction is found, the corrected
      path is printed, and the command proceeds.  This option is
      only used by interactive shells.

 'checkhash'
      If this is set, Bash checks that a command found in the hash
      table exists before trying to execute it.  If a hashed command
      no longer exists, a normal path search is performed.

 'checkjobs'
      If set, Bash lists the status of any stopped and running jobs
      before exiting an interactive shell.  If any jobs are running,
      this causes the exit to be deferred until a second exit is
      attempted without an intervening command (*note Job
      Control::).  The shell always postpones exiting if any jobs
      are stopped.

 'checkwinsize'
      If set, Bash checks the window size after each external
      (non-builtin) command and, if necessary, updates the values of
      'LINES' and 'COLUMNS'.  This option is enabled by default.

 'cmdhist'
      If set, Bash attempts to save all lines of a multiple-line
      command in the same history entry.  This allows easy
      re-editing of multi-line commands.  This option is enabled by
      default, but only has an effect if command history is enabled
      (*note Bash History Facilities::).

 'compat31'
 'compat32'
 'compat40'
 'compat41'
 'compat42'
 'compat43'
 'compat44'
      These control aspects of the shell's compatibility mode (*note
      Shell Compatibility Mode::).

 'complete_fullquote'
      If set, Bash quotes all shell metacharacters in filenames and
      directory names when performing completion.  If not set, Bash
      removes metacharacters such as the dollar sign from the set of
      characters that will be quoted in completed filenames when
      these metacharacters appear in shell variable references in
      words to be completed.  This means that dollar signs in
      variable names that expand to directories will not be quoted;
      however, any dollar signs appearing in filenames will not be
      quoted, either.  This is active only when bash is using
      backslashes to quote completed filenames.  This variable is
      set by default, which is the default Bash behavior in versions
      through 4.2.

 'direxpand'
      If set, Bash replaces directory names with the results of word
      expansion when performing filename completion.  This changes
      the contents of the readline editing buffer.  If not set, Bash
      attempts to preserve what the user typed.

 'dirspell'
      If set, Bash attempts spelling correction on directory names
      during word completion if the directory name initially
      supplied does not exist.

 'dotglob'
      If set, Bash includes filenames beginning with a '.'  in the
      results of filename expansion.  The filenames '.' and '..'
      must always be matched explicitly, even if 'dotglob' is set.

 'execfail'
      If this is set, a non-interactive shell will not exit if it
      cannot execute the file specified as an argument to the 'exec'
      builtin command.  An interactive shell does not exit if 'exec'
      fails.

 'expand_aliases'
      If set, aliases are expanded as described below under Aliases,
      *note Aliases::.  This option is enabled by default for
      interactive shells.

 'extdebug'
      If set at shell invocation, or in a shell startup file,
      arrange to execute the debugger profile before the shell
      starts, identical to the '--debugger' option.  If set after
      invocation, behavior intended for use by debuggers is enabled:

        1. The '-F' option to the 'declare' builtin (*note Bash
           Builtins::) displays the source file name and line number
           corresponding to each function name supplied as an
           argument.

        2. If the command run by the 'DEBUG' trap returns a non-zero
           value, the next command is skipped and not executed.

        3. If the command run by the 'DEBUG' trap returns a value of
           2, and the shell is executing in a subroutine (a shell
           function or a shell script executed by the '.' or
           'source' builtins), the shell simulates a call to
           'return'.

        4. 'BASH_ARGC' and 'BASH_ARGV' are updated as described in
           their descriptions (*note Bash Variables::).

        5. Function tracing is enabled: command substitution, shell
           functions, and subshells invoked with '( COMMAND )'
           inherit the 'DEBUG' and 'RETURN' traps.

        6. Error tracing is enabled: command substitution, shell
           functions, and subshells invoked with '( COMMAND )'
           inherit the 'ERR' trap.

 'extglob'
      If set, the extended pattern matching features described above
      (*note Pattern Matching::) are enabled.

 'extquote'
      If set, '$'STRING'' and '$"STRING"' quoting is performed
      within '${PARAMETER}' expansions enclosed in double quotes.
      This option is enabled by default.

 'failglob'
      If set, patterns which fail to match filenames during filename
      expansion result in an expansion error.

 'force_fignore'
      If set, the suffixes specified by the 'FIGNORE' shell variable
      cause words to be ignored when performing word completion even
      if the ignored words are the only possible completions.  *Note
      Bash Variables::, for a description of 'FIGNORE'.  This option
      is enabled by default.

 'globasciiranges'
      If set, range expressions used in pattern matching bracket
      expressions (*note Pattern Matching::) behave as if in the
      traditional C locale when performing comparisons.  That is,
      the current locale's collating sequence is not taken into
      account, so 'b' will not collate between 'A' and 'B', and
      upper-case and lower-case ASCII characters will collate
      together.

 'globstar'
      If set, the pattern '**' used in a filename expansion context
      will match all files and zero or more directories and
      subdirectories.  If the pattern is followed by a '/', only
      directories and subdirectories match.

 'gnu_errfmt'
      If set, shell error messages are written in the standard GNU
      error message format.

 'histappend'
      If set, the history list is appended to the file named by the
      value of the 'HISTFILE' variable when the shell exits, rather
      than overwriting the file.

 'histreedit'
      If set, and Readline is being used, a user is given the
      opportunity to re-edit a failed history substitution.

 'histverify'
      If set, and Readline is being used, the results of history
      substitution are not immediately passed to the shell parser.
      Instead, the resulting line is loaded into the Readline
      editing buffer, allowing further modification.

 'hostcomplete'
      If set, and Readline is being used, Bash will attempt to
      perform hostname completion when a word containing a '@' is
      being completed (*note Commands For Completion::).  This
      option is enabled by default.

 'huponexit'
      If set, Bash will send 'SIGHUP' to all jobs when an
      interactive login shell exits (*note Signals::).

 'inherit_errexit'
      If set, command substitution inherits the value of the
      'errexit' option, instead of unsetting it in the subshell
      environment.  This option is enabled when POSIX mode is
      enabled.

 'interactive_comments'
      Allow a word beginning with '#' to cause that word and all
      remaining characters on that line to be ignored in an
      interactive shell.  This option is enabled by default.

 'lastpipe'
      If set, and job control is not active, the shell runs the last
      command of a pipeline not executed in the background in the
      current shell environment.

 'lithist'
      If enabled, and the 'cmdhist' option is enabled, multi-line
      commands are saved to the history with embedded newlines
      rather than using semicolon separators where possible.

 'localvar_inherit'
      If set, local variables inherit the value and attributes of a
      variable of the same name that exists at a previous scope
      before any new value is assigned.  The NAMEREF attribute is
      not inherited.

 'localvar_unset'
      If set, calling 'unset' on local variables in previous
      function scopes marks them so subsequent lookups find them
      unset until that function returns.  This is identical to the
      behavior of unsetting local variables at the current function
      scope.

 'login_shell'
      The shell sets this option if it is started as a login shell
      (*note Invoking Bash::).  The value may not be changed.

 'mailwarn'
      If set, and a file that Bash is checking for mail has been
      accessed since the last time it was checked, the message '"The
      mail in MAILFILE has been read"' is displayed.

 'no_empty_cmd_completion'
      If set, and Readline is being used, Bash will not attempt to
      search the 'PATH' for possible completions when completion is
      attempted on an empty line.

 'nocaseglob'
      If set, Bash matches filenames in a case-insensitive fashion
      when performing filename expansion.

 'nocasematch'
      If set, Bash matches patterns in a case-insensitive fashion
      when performing matching while executing 'case' or '[['
      conditional commands, when performing pattern substitution
      word expansions, or when filtering possible completions as
      part of programmable completion.

 'nullglob'
      If set, Bash allows filename patterns which match no files to
      expand to a null string, rather than themselves.

 'progcomp'
      If set, the programmable completion facilities (*note
      Programmable Completion::) are enabled.  This option is
      enabled by default.

 'progcomp_alias'
      If set, and programmable completion is enabled, Bash treats a
      command name that doesn't have any completions as a possible
      alias and attempts alias expansion.  If it has an alias, Bash
      attempts programmable completion using the command word
      resulting from the expanded alias.

 'promptvars'
      If set, prompt strings undergo parameter expansion, command
      substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal after
      being expanded as described below (*note Controlling the
      Prompt::).  This option is enabled by default.

 'restricted_shell'
      The shell sets this option if it is started in restricted mode
      (*note The Restricted Shell::).  The value may not be changed.
      This is not reset when the startup files are executed,
      allowing the startup files to discover whether or not a shell
      is restricted.

 'shift_verbose'
      If this is set, the 'shift' builtin prints an error message
      when the shift count exceeds the number of positional
      parameters.

 'sourcepath'
      If set, the 'source' builtin uses the value of 'PATH' to find
      the directory containing the file supplied as an argument.
      This option is enabled by default.

 'xpg_echo'
      If set, the 'echo' builtin expands backslash-escape sequences
      by default.

File: bash.info, Node: Special Builtins, Prev: Modifying Shell Behavior, Up: Shell Builtin Commands

4.4 Special Builtins

For historical reasons, the POSIX standard has classified several
builtin commands as special. When Bash is executing in POSIX mode,
the special builtins differ from other builtin commands in three
respects:

1. Special builtins are found before shell functions during command
   lookup.

2. If a special builtin returns an error status, a non-interactive
   shell exits.

3. Assignment statements preceding the command stay in effect in the
   shell environment after the command completes.

When Bash is not executing in POSIX mode, these builtins behave no
differently than the rest of the Bash builtin commands. The Bash POSIX
mode is described in *note Bash POSIX Mode::.

These are the POSIX special builtins:
break : . continue eval exec exit export readonly return set
shift trap unset

File: bash.info, Node: Shell Variables, Next: Bash Features, Prev: Shell Builtin Commands, Up: Top

5 Shell Variables

---

• Menu:

• Bourne Shell Variables:: Variables which Bash uses in the same way
  as the Bourne Shell.

• Bash Variables:: List of variables that exist in Bash.

This chapter describes the shell variables that Bash uses. Bash
automatically assigns default values to a number of variables.

File: bash.info, Node: Bourne Shell Variables, Next: Bash Variables, Up: Shell Variables

5.1 Bourne Shell Variables

Bash uses certain shell variables in the same way as the Bourne shell.
In some cases, Bash assigns a default value to the variable.

‘CDPATH’
A colon-separated list of directories used as a search path for the
‘cd’ builtin command.

‘HOME’
The current user’s home directory; the default for the ‘cd’ builtin
command. The value of this variable is also used by tilde
expansion (*note Tilde Expansion:😃.

‘IFS’
A list of characters that separate fields; used when the shell
splits words as part of expansion.

‘MAIL’
If this parameter is set to a filename or directory name and the
‘MAILPATH’ variable is not set, Bash informs the user of the
arrival of mail in the specified file or Maildir-format directory.

‘MAILPATH’
A colon-separated list of filenames which the shell periodically
checks for new mail. Each list entry can specify the message that
is printed when new mail arrives in the mail file by separating the
filename from the message with a ‘?’. When used in the text of the
message, ‘$_’ expands to the name of the current mail file.

‘OPTARG’
The value of the last option argument processed by the ‘getopts’
builtin.

‘OPTIND’
The index of the last option argument processed by the ‘getopts’
builtin.

‘PATH’
A colon-separated list of directories in which the shell looks for
commands. A zero-length (null) directory name in the value of
‘PATH’ indicates the current directory. A null directory name may
appear as two adjacent colons, or as an initial or trailing colon.

‘PS1’
The primary prompt string. The default value is '\s-\v$ '. *Note
Controlling the Prompt::, for the complete list of escape sequences
that are expanded before ‘PS1’ is displayed.

‘PS2’
The secondary prompt string. The default value is '> '. ‘PS2’ is
expanded in the same way as ‘PS1’ before being displayed.

File: bash.info, Node: Bash Variables, Prev: Bourne Shell Variables, Up: Shell Variables

5.2 Bash Variables

These variables are set or used by Bash, but other shells do not
normally treat them specially.

A few variables used by Bash are described in different chapters:
variables for controlling the job control facilities (*note Job Control
Variables:😃.

'’
($, an underscore.) At shell startup, set to the pathname used to
invoke the shell or shell script being executed as passed in the
environment or argument list. Subsequently, expands to the last
argument to the previous simple command executed in the foreground,
after expansion. Also set to the full pathname used to invoke each
command executed and placed in the environment exported to that
command. When checking mail, this parameter holds the name of the
mail file.

‘BASH’
The full pathname used to execute the current instance of Bash.

‘BASHOPTS’
A colon-separated list of enabled shell options. Each word in the
list is a valid argument for the ‘-s’ option to the ‘shopt’ builtin
command (*note The Shopt Builtin:😃. The options appearing in
‘BASHOPTS’ are those reported as ‘on’ by ‘shopt’. If this variable
is in the environment when Bash starts up, each shell option in the
list will be enabled before reading any startup files. This
variable is readonly.

‘BASHPID’
Expands to the process ID of the current Bash process. This
differs from ‘$$’ under certain circumstances, such as subshells
that do not require Bash to be re-initialized. Assignments to
‘BASHPID’ have no effect. If ‘BASHPID’ is unset, it loses its
special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘BASH_ALIASES’
An associative array variable whose members correspond to the
internal list of aliases as maintained by the ‘alias’ builtin.
(*note Bourne Shell Builtins:😃. Elements added to this array
appear in the alias list; however, unsetting array elements
currently does not cause aliases to be removed from the alias list.
If ‘BASH_ALIASES’ is unset, it loses its special properties, even
if it is subsequently reset.

‘BASH_ARGC’
An array variable whose values are the number of parameters in each
frame of the current bash execution call stack. The number of
parameters to the current subroutine (shell function or script
executed with ‘.’ or ‘source’) is at the top of the stack. When a
subroutine is executed, the number of parameters passed is pushed
onto ‘BASH_ARGC’. The shell sets ‘BASH_ARGC’ only when in extended
debugging mode (see *note The Shopt Builtin:: for a description of
the ‘extdebug’ option to the ‘shopt’ builtin). Setting ‘extdebug’
after the shell has started to execute a script, or referencing
this variable when ‘extdebug’ is not set, may result in
inconsistent values.

‘BASH_ARGV’
An array variable containing all of the parameters in the current
bash execution call stack. The final parameter of the last
subroutine call is at the top of the stack; the first parameter of
the initial call is at the bottom. When a subroutine is executed,
the parameters supplied are pushed onto ‘BASH_ARGV’. The shell
sets ‘BASH_ARGV’ only when in extended debugging mode (see *note
The Shopt Builtin:: for a description of the ‘extdebug’ option to
the ‘shopt’ builtin). Setting ‘extdebug’ after the shell has
started to execute a script, or referencing this variable when
‘extdebug’ is not set, may result in inconsistent values.

‘BASH_ARGV0’
When referenced, this variable expands to the name of the shell or
shell script (identical to ‘$0’; *Note Special Parameters::, for
the description of special parameter 0). Assignment to
‘BASH_ARGV0’ causes the value assigned to also be assigned to ‘$0’.
If ‘BASH_ARGV0’ is unset, it loses its special properties, even if
it is subsequently reset.

‘BASH_CMDS’
An associative array variable whose members correspond to the
internal hash table of commands as maintained by the ‘hash’ builtin
(*note Bourne Shell Builtins:😃. Elements added to this array
appear in the hash table; however, unsetting array elements
currently does not cause command names to be removed from the hash
table. If ‘BASH_CMDS’ is unset, it loses its special properties,
even if it is subsequently reset.

‘BASH_COMMAND’
The command currently being executed or about to be executed,
unless the shell is executing a command as the result of a trap, in
which case it is the command executing at the time of the trap. If
‘BASH_COMMAND’ is unset, it loses its special properties, even if
it is subsequently reset.

‘BASH_COMPAT’
The value is used to set the shell’s compatibility level. *Note
Shell Compatibility Mode::, for a description of the various
compatibility levels and their effects. The value may be a decimal
number (e.g., 4.2) or an integer (e.g., 42) corresponding to the
desired compatibility level. If ‘BASH_COMPAT’ is unset or set to
the empty string, the compatibility level is set to the default for
the current version. If ‘BASH_COMPAT’ is set to a value that is
not one of the valid compatibility levels, the shell prints an
error message and sets the compatibility level to the default for
the current version. The valid values correspond to the
compatibility levels described below (*note Shell Compatibility
Mode:😃. For example, 4.2 and 42 are valid values that correspond
to the ‘compat42’ ‘shopt’ option and set the compatibility level to
42. The current version is also a valid value.

‘BASH_ENV’
If this variable is set when Bash is invoked to execute a shell
script, its value is expanded and used as the name of a startup
file to read before executing the script. *Note Bash Startup
Files::.

‘BASH_EXECUTION_STRING’
The command argument to the ‘-c’ invocation option.

‘BASH_LINENO’
An array variable whose members are the line numbers in source
files where each corresponding member of FUNCNAME was invoked.
‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: {BASH_LINENO[i]}’ is the line number in the source file
(‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: {BASH_SOURCE[i+1]}’) where ‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: {FUNCNAME[i]}’ was called (or
‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: {BASH_LINENO[i-1]}’ if referenced within another shell
function). Use ‘LINENO’ to obtain the current line number.

‘BASH_LOADABLES_PATH’
A colon-separated list of directories in which the shell looks for
dynamically loadable builtins specified by the ‘enable’ command.

‘BASH_REMATCH’
An array variable whose members are assigned by the ‘=~’ binary
operator to the ‘[[’ conditional command (*note Conditional
Constructs:😃. The element with index 0 is the portion of the
string matching the entire regular expression. The element with
index N is the portion of the string matching the Nth parenthesized
subexpression.

‘BASH_SOURCE’
An array variable whose members are the source filenames where the
corresponding shell function names in the ‘FUNCNAME’ array variable
are defined. The shell function ‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: {FUNCNAME[i]}’ is defined in
the file ‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: {BASH_SOURCE[i]}’ and called from
‘KaTeX parse error: Expected '}', got 'EOF' at end of input: {BASH_SOURCE[i+1]}’

‘BASH_SUBSHELL’
Incremented by one within each subshell or subshell environment
when the shell begins executing in that environment. The initial
value is 0. If ‘BASH_SUBSHELL’ is unset, it loses its special
properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘BASH_VERSINFO’
A readonly array variable (*note Arrays:😃 whose members hold
version information for this instance of Bash. The values assigned
to the array members are as follows:

 'BASH_VERSINFO[0]'
      The major version number (the RELEASE).

 'BASH_VERSINFO[1]'
      The minor version number (the VERSION).

 'BASH_VERSINFO[2]'
      The patch level.

 'BASH_VERSINFO[3]'
      The build version.

 'BASH_VERSINFO[4]'
      The release status (e.g., BETA1).

 'BASH_VERSINFO[5]'
      The value of 'MACHTYPE'.

‘BASH_VERSION’
The version number of the current instance of Bash.

‘BASH_XTRACEFD’
If set to an integer corresponding to a valid file descriptor, Bash
will write the trace output generated when ‘set -x’ is enabled to
that file descriptor. This allows tracing output to be separated
from diagnostic and error messages. The file descriptor is closed
when ‘BASH_XTRACEFD’ is unset or assigned a new value. Unsetting
‘BASH_XTRACEFD’ or assigning it the empty string causes the trace
output to be sent to the standard error. Note that setting
‘BASH_XTRACEFD’ to 2 (the standard error file descriptor) and then
unsetting it will result in the standard error being closed.

‘CHILD_MAX’
Set the number of exited child status values for the shell to
remember. Bash will not allow this value to be decreased below a
POSIX-mandated minimum, and there is a maximum value (currently
8192) that this may not exceed. The minimum value is
system-dependent.

‘COLUMNS’
Used by the ‘select’ command to determine the terminal width when
printing selection lists. Automatically set if the ‘checkwinsize’
option is enabled (*note The Shopt Builtin:😃, or in an interactive
shell upon receipt of a ‘SIGWINCH’.

‘COMP_CWORD’
An index into ‘${COMP_WORDS}’ of the word containing the current
cursor position. This variable is available only in shell
functions invoked by the programmable completion facilities (*note
Programmable Completion:😃.

‘COMP_LINE’
The current command line. This variable is available only in shell
functions and external commands invoked by the programmable
completion facilities (*note Programmable Completion:😃.

‘COMP_POINT’
The index of the current cursor position relative to the beginning
of the current command. If the current cursor position is at the
end of the current command, the value of this variable is equal to
‘${#COMP_LINE}’. This variable is available only in shell
functions and external commands invoked by the programmable
completion facilities (*note Programmable Completion:😃.

‘COMP_TYPE’
Set to an integer value corresponding to the type of completion
attempted that caused a completion function to be called: TAB, for
normal completion, ‘?’, for listing completions after successive
tabs, ‘!’, for listing alternatives on partial word completion,
‘@’, to list completions if the word is not unmodified, or ‘%’, for
menu completion. This variable is available only in shell
functions and external commands invoked by the programmable
completion facilities (*note Programmable Completion:😃.

‘COMP_KEY’
The key (or final key of a key sequence) used to invoke the current
completion function.

‘COMP_WORDBREAKS’
The set of characters that the Readline library treats as word
separators when performing word completion. If ‘COMP_WORDBREAKS’
is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is
subsequently reset.

‘COMP_WORDS’
An array variable consisting of the individual words in the current
command line. The line is split into words as Readline would split
it, using ‘COMP_WORDBREAKS’ as described above. This variable is
available only in shell functions invoked by the programmable
completion facilities (*note Programmable Completion:😃.

‘COMPREPLY’
An array variable from which Bash reads the possible completions
generated by a shell function invoked by the programmable
completion facility (*note Programmable Completion:😃. Each array
element contains one possible completion.

‘COPROC’
An array variable created to hold the file descriptors for output
from and input to an unnamed coprocess (*note Coprocesses:😃.

‘DIRSTACK’
An array variable containing the current contents of the directory
stack. Directories appear in the stack in the order they are
displayed by the ‘dirs’ builtin. Assigning to members of this
array variable may be used to modify directories already in the
stack, but the ‘pushd’ and ‘popd’ builtins must be used to add and
remove directories. Assignment to this variable will not change
the current directory. If ‘DIRSTACK’ is unset, it loses its
special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘EMACS’
If Bash finds this variable in the environment when the shell
starts with value ‘t’, it assumes that the shell is running in an
Emacs shell buffer and disables line editing.

‘ENV’
Expanded and executed similarlty to ‘BASH_ENV’ (*note Bash Startup
Files:😃 when an interactive shell is invoked in POSIX Mode (*note
Bash POSIX Mode:😃.

‘EPOCHREALTIME’
Each time this parameter is referenced, it expands to the number of
seconds since the Unix Epoch as a floating point value with
micro-second granularity (see the documentation for the C library
function TIME for the definition of Epoch). Assignments to
‘EPOCHREALTIME’ are ignored. If ‘EPOCHREALTIME’ is unset, it loses
its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘EPOCHSECONDS’
Each time this parameter is referenced, it expands to the number of
seconds since the Unix Epoch (see the documentation for the C
library function TIME for the definition of Epoch). Assignments to
‘EPOCHSECONDS’ are ignored. If ‘EPOCHSECONDS’ is unset, it loses
its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘EUID’
The numeric effective user id of the current user. This variable
is readonly.

‘EXECIGNORE’
A colon-separated list of shell patterns (*note Pattern Matching:😃
defining the list of filenames to be ignored by command search
using ‘PATH’. Files whose full pathnames match one of these
patterns are not considered executable files for the purposes of
completion and command execution via ‘PATH’ lookup. This does not
affect the behavior of the ‘[’, ‘test’, and ‘[[’ commands. Full
pathnames in the command hash table are not subject to
‘EXECIGNORE’. Use this variable to ignore shared library files
that have the executable bit set, but are not executable files.
The pattern matching honors the setting of the ‘extglob’ shell
option.

‘FCEDIT’
The editor used as a default by the ‘-e’ option to the ‘fc’ builtin
command.

‘FIGNORE’
A colon-separated list of suffixes to ignore when performing
filename completion. A filename whose suffix matches one of the
entries in ‘FIGNORE’ is excluded from the list of matched
filenames. A sample value is ‘.o:~’

‘FUNCNAME’
An array variable containing the names of all shell functions
currently in the execution call stack. The element with index 0 is
the name of any currently-executing shell function. The
bottom-most element (the one with the highest index) is ‘“main”’.
This variable exists only when a shell function is executing.
Assignments to ‘FUNCNAME’ have no effect. If ‘FUNCNAME’ is unset,
it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

 This variable can be used with 'BASH_LINENO' and 'BASH_SOURCE'.
 Each element of 'FUNCNAME' has corresponding elements in
 'BASH_LINENO' and 'BASH_SOURCE' to describe the call stack.  For
 instance, '${FUNCNAME[$i]}' was called from the file
 '${BASH_SOURCE[$i+1]}' at line number '${BASH_LINENO[$i]}'.  The
 'caller' builtin displays the current call stack using this
 information.

‘FUNCNEST’
If set to a numeric value greater than 0, defines a maximum
function nesting level. Function invocations that exceed this
nesting level will cause the current command to abort.

‘GLOBIGNORE’
A colon-separated list of patterns defining the set of file names
to be ignored by filename expansion. If a file name matched by a
filename expansion pattern also matches one of the patterns in
‘GLOBIGNORE’, it is removed from the list of matches. The pattern
matching honors the setting of the ‘extglob’ shell option.

‘GROUPS’
An array variable containing the list of groups of which the
current user is a member. Assignments to ‘GROUPS’ have no effect.
If ‘GROUPS’ is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it
is subsequently reset.

‘histchars’
Up to three characters which control history expansion, quick
substitution, and tokenization (*note History Interaction:😃. The
first character is the HISTORY EXPANSION character, that is, the
character which signifies the start of a history expansion,
normally ‘!’. The second character is the character which
signifies ‘quick substitution’ when seen as the first character on
a line, normally ‘^’. The optional third character is the
character which indicates that the remainder of the line is a
comment when found as the first character of a word, usually ‘#’.
The history comment character causes history substitution to be
skipped for the remaining words on the line. It does not
necessarily cause the shell parser to treat the rest of the line as
a comment.

‘HISTCMD’
The history number, or index in the history list, of the current
command. Assignments to ‘HISTCMD’ are ignored. If ‘HISTCMD’ is
unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently
reset.

‘HISTCONTROL’
A colon-separated list of values controlling how commands are saved
on the history list. If the list of values includes ‘ignorespace’,
lines which begin with a space character are not saved in the
history list. A value of ‘ignoredups’ causes lines which match the
previous history entry to not be saved. A value of ‘ignoreboth’ is
shorthand for ‘ignorespace’ and ‘ignoredups’. A value of
‘erasedups’ causes all previous lines matching the current line to
be removed from the history list before that line is saved. Any
value not in the above list is ignored. If ‘HISTCONTROL’ is unset,
or does not include a valid value, all lines read by the shell
parser are saved on the history list, subject to the value of
‘HISTIGNORE’. The second and subsequent lines of a multi-line
compound command are not tested, and are added to the history
regardless of the value of ‘HISTCONTROL’.

‘HISTFILE’
The name of the file to which the command history is saved. The
default value is ‘~/.bash_history’.

‘HISTFILESIZE’
The maximum number of lines contained in the history file. When
this variable is assigned a value, the history file is truncated,
if necessary, to contain no more than that number of lines by
removing the oldest entries. The history file is also truncated to
this size after writing it when a shell exits. If the value is 0,
the history file is truncated to zero size. Non-numeric values and
numeric values less than zero inhibit truncation. The shell sets
the default value to the value of ‘HISTSIZE’ after reading any
startup files.

‘HISTIGNORE’
A colon-separated list of patterns used to decide which command
lines should be saved on the history list. Each pattern is
anchored at the beginning of the line and must match the complete
line (no implicit ‘*’ is appended). Each pattern is tested against
the line after the checks specified by ‘HISTCONTROL’ are applied.
In addition to the normal shell pattern matching characters, ‘&’
matches the previous history line. ‘&’ may be escaped using a
backslash; the backslash is removed before attempting a match. The
second and subsequent lines of a multi-line compound command are
not tested, and are added to the history regardless of the value of
‘HISTIGNORE’. The pattern matching honors the setting of the
‘extglob’ shell option.

 'HISTIGNORE' subsumes the function of 'HISTCONTROL'.  A pattern of
 '&' is identical to 'ignoredups', and a pattern of '[ ]*' is
 identical to 'ignorespace'.  Combining these two patterns,
 separating them with a colon, provides the functionality of
 'ignoreboth'.

‘HISTSIZE’
The maximum number of commands to remember on the history list. If
the value is 0, commands are not saved in the history list.
Numeric values less than zero result in every command being saved
on the history list (there is no limit). The shell sets the
default value to 500 after reading any startup files.

‘HISTTIMEFORMAT’
If this variable is set and not null, its value is used as a format
string for STRFTIME to print the time stamp associated with each
history entry displayed by the ‘history’ builtin. If this variable
is set, time stamps are written to the history file so they may be
preserved across shell sessions. This uses the history comment
character to distinguish timestamps from other history lines.

‘HOSTFILE’
Contains the name of a file in the same format as ‘/etc/hosts’ that
should be read when the shell needs to complete a hostname. The
list of possible hostname completions may be changed while the
shell is running; the next time hostname completion is attempted
after the value is changed, Bash adds the contents of the new file
to the existing list. If ‘HOSTFILE’ is set, but has no value, or
does not name a readable file, Bash attempts to read ‘/etc/hosts’
to obtain the list of possible hostname completions. When
‘HOSTFILE’ is unset, the hostname list is cleared.

‘HOSTNAME’
The name of the current host.

‘HOSTTYPE’
A string describing the machine Bash is running on.

‘IGNOREEOF’
Controls the action of the shell on receipt of an ‘EOF’ character
as the sole input. If set, the value denotes the number of
consecutive ‘EOF’ characters that can be read as the first
character on an input line before the shell will exit. If the
variable exists but does not have a numeric value, or has no value,
then the default is 10. If the variable does not exist, then ‘EOF’
signifies the end of input to the shell. This is only in effect
for interactive shells.

‘INPUTRC’
The name of the Readline initialization file, overriding the
default of ‘~/.inputrc’.

‘INSIDE_EMACS’
If Bash finds this variable in the environment when the shell
starts, it assumes that the shell is running in an Emacs shell
buffer and may disable line editing depending on the value of
‘TERM’.

‘LANG’
Used to determine the locale category for any category not
specifically selected with a variable starting with ‘LC_’.

‘LC_ALL’
This variable overrides the value of ‘LANG’ and any other ‘LC_’
variable specifying a locale category.

‘LC_COLLATE’
This variable determines the collation order used when sorting the
results of filename expansion, and determines the behavior of range
expressions, equivalence classes, and collating sequences within
filename expansion and pattern matching (*note Filename
Expansion:😃.

‘LC_CTYPE’
This variable determines the interpretation of characters and the
behavior of character classes within filename expansion and pattern
matching (*note Filename Expansion:😃.

‘LC_MESSAGES’
This variable determines the locale used to translate double-quoted
strings preceded by a ‘$’ (*note Locale Translation:😃.

‘LC_NUMERIC’
This variable determines the locale category used for number
formatting.

‘LC_TIME’
This variable determines the locale category used for data and time
formatting.

‘LINENO’
The line number in the script or shell function currently
executing. If ‘LINENO’ is unset, it loses its special properties,
even if it is subsequently reset.

‘LINES’
Used by the ‘select’ command to determine the column length for
printing selection lists. Automatically set if the ‘checkwinsize’
option is enabled (*note The Shopt Builtin:😃, or in an interactive
shell upon receipt of a ‘SIGWINCH’.

‘MACHTYPE’
A string that fully describes the system type on which Bash is
executing, in the standard GNU CPU-COMPANY-SYSTEM format.

‘MAILCHECK’
How often (in seconds) that the shell should check for mail in the
files specified in the ‘MAILPATH’ or ‘MAIL’ variables. The default
is 60 seconds. When it is time to check for mail, the shell does
so before displaying the primary prompt. If this variable is
unset, or set to a value that is not a number greater than or equal
to zero, the shell disables mail checking.

‘MAPFILE’
An array variable created to hold the text read by the ‘mapfile’
builtin when no variable name is supplied.

‘OLDPWD’
The previous working directory as set by the ‘cd’ builtin.

‘OPTERR’
If set to the value 1, Bash displays error messages generated by
the ‘getopts’ builtin command.

‘OSTYPE’
A string describing the operating system Bash is running on.

‘PIPESTATUS’
An array variable (*note Arrays:😃 containing a list of exit status
values from the processes in the most-recently-executed foreground
pipeline (which may contain only a single command).

‘POSIXLY_CORRECT’
If this variable is in the environment when Bash starts, the shell
enters POSIX mode (*note Bash POSIX Mode:😃 before reading the
startup files, as if the ‘–posix’ invocation option had been
supplied. If it is set while the shell is running, Bash enables
POSIX mode, as if the command
set -o posix
had been executed. When the shell enters POSIX mode, it sets this
variable if it was not already set.

‘PPID’
The process ID of the shell’s parent process. This variable is
readonly.

‘PROMPT_COMMAND’
If this variable is set, and is an array, the value of each set
element is interpreted as a command to execute before printing the
primary prompt (‘$PS1’). If this is set but not an array variable,
its value is used as a command to execute instead.

‘PROMPT_DIRTRIM’
If set to a number greater than zero, the value is used as the
number of trailing directory components to retain when expanding
the ‘\w’ and ‘\W’ prompt string escapes (*note Controlling the
Prompt:😃. Characters removed are replaced with an ellipsis.

‘PS0’
The value of this parameter is expanded like ‘PS1’ and displayed by
interactive shells after reading a command and before the command
is executed.

‘PS3’
The value of this variable is used as the prompt for the ‘select’
command. If this variable is not set, the ‘select’ command prompts
with '#? ’

‘PS4’
The value of this parameter is expanded like PS1 and the expanded
value is the prompt printed before the command line is echoed when
the ‘-x’ option is set (*note The Set Builtin:😃. The first
character of the expanded value is replicated multiple times, as
necessary, to indicate multiple levels of indirection. The default
is '+ '.

‘PWD’
The current working directory as set by the ‘cd’ builtin.

‘RANDOM’
Each time this parameter is referenced, it expands to a random
integer between 0 and 32767. Assigning a value to this variable
seeds the random number generator. If ‘RANDOM’ is unset, it loses
its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘READLINE_LINE’
The contents of the Readline line buffer, for use with ‘bind -x’
(*note Bash Builtins:😃.

‘READLINE_MARK’
The position of the MARK (saved insertion point) in the Readline
line buffer, for use with ‘bind -x’ (*note Bash Builtins:😃. The
characters between the insertion point and the mark are often
called the REGION.

‘READLINE_POINT’
The position of the insertion point in the Readline line buffer,
for use with ‘bind -x’ (*note Bash Builtins:😃.

‘REPLY’
The default variable for the ‘read’ builtin.

‘SECONDS’
This variable expands to the number of seconds since the shell was
started. Assignment to this variable resets the count to the value
assigned, and the expanded value becomes the value assigned plus
the number of seconds since the assignment. The number of seconds
at shell invocation and the current time is always determined by
querying the system clock. If ‘SECONDS’ is unset, it loses its
special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘SHELL’
This environment variable expands to the full pathname to the
shell. If it is not set when the shell starts, Bash assigns to it
the full pathname of the current user’s login shell.

‘SHELLOPTS’
A colon-separated list of enabled shell options. Each word in the
list is a valid argument for the ‘-o’ option to the ‘set’ builtin
command (*note The Set Builtin:😃. The options appearing in
‘SHELLOPTS’ are those reported as ‘on’ by ‘set -o’. If this
variable is in the environment when Bash starts up, each shell
option in the list will be enabled before reading any startup
files. This variable is readonly.

‘SHLVL’
Incremented by one each time a new instance of Bash is started.
This is intended to be a count of how deeply your Bash shells are
nested.

‘SRANDOM’
This variable expands to a 32-bit pseudo-random number each time it
is referenced. The random number generator is not linear on
systems that support ‘/dev/urandom’ or ‘arc4random’, so each
returned number has no relationship to the numbers preceding it.
The random number generator cannot be seeded, so assignments to
this variable have no effect. If ‘SRANDOM’ is unset, it loses its
special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

‘TIMEFORMAT’
The value of this parameter is used as a format string specifying
how the timing information for pipelines prefixed with the ‘time’
reserved word should be displayed. The ‘%’ character introduces an
escape sequence that is expanded to a time value or other
information. The escape sequences and their meanings are as
follows; the braces denote optional portions.

 '%%'
      A literal '%'.

 '%[P][l]R'
      The elapsed time in seconds.

 '%[P][l]U'
      The number of CPU seconds spent in user mode.

 '%[P][l]S'
      The number of CPU seconds spent in system mode.

 '%P'
      The CPU percentage, computed as (%U + %S) / %R.

 The optional P is a digit specifying the precision, the number of
 fractional digits after a decimal point.  A value of 0 causes no
 decimal point or fraction to be output.  At most three places after
 the decimal point may be specified; values of P greater than 3 are
 changed to 3.  If P is not specified, the value 3 is used.

 The optional 'l' specifies a longer format, including minutes, of
 the form MMmSS.FFs.  The value of P determines whether or not the
 fraction is included.

 If this variable is not set, Bash acts as if it had the value
      $'\nreal\t%3lR\nuser\t%3lU\nsys\t%3lS'
 If the value is null, no timing information is displayed.  A
 trailing newline is added when the format string is displayed.

‘TMOUT’
If set to a value greater than zero, ‘TMOUT’ is treated as the
default timeout for the ‘read’ builtin (*note Bash Builtins:😃.
The ‘select’ command (*note Conditional Constructs:😃 terminates if
input does not arrive after ‘TMOUT’ seconds when input is coming
from a terminal.

 In an interactive shell, the value is interpreted as the number of
 seconds to wait for a line of input after issuing the primary
 prompt.  Bash terminates after waiting for that number of seconds
 if a complete line of input does not arrive.

‘TMPDIR’
If set, Bash uses its value as the name of a directory in which
Bash creates temporary files for the shell’s use.

‘UID’
The numeric real user id of the current user. This variable is
readonly.

File: bash.info, Node: Bash Features, Next: Job Control, Prev: Shell Variables, Up: Top

6 Bash Features

---

This chapter describes features unique to Bash.

• Menu:

• Invoking Bash:: Command line options that you can give
  to Bash.

• Bash Startup Files:: When and how Bash executes scripts.

• Interactive Shells:: What an interactive shell is.

• Bash Conditional Expressions:: Primitives used in composing expressions for
  the ‘test’ builtin.

• Shell Arithmetic:: Arithmetic on shell variables.

• Aliases:: Substituting one command for another.

• Arrays:: Array Variables.

• The Directory Stack:: History of visited directories.

• Controlling the Prompt:: Customizing the various prompt strings.

• The Restricted Shell:: A more controlled mode of shell execution.

• Bash POSIX Mode:: Making Bash behave more closely to what
  the POSIX standard specifies.

• Shell Compatibility Mode:: How Bash supports behavior that was present
  in earlier versions and has changed.

File: bash.info, Node: Invoking Bash, Next: Bash Startup Files, Up: Bash Features

6.1 Invoking Bash

 bash [long-opt] [-ir] [-abefhkmnptuvxdBCDHP] [-o OPTION]
     [-O SHOPT_OPTION] [ARGUMENT ...]
 bash [long-opt] [-abefhkmnptuvxdBCDHP] [-o OPTION]
     [-O SHOPT_OPTION] -c STRING [ARGUMENT ...]
 bash [long-opt] -s [-abefhkmnptuvxdBCDHP] [-o OPTION]
     [-O SHOPT_OPTION] [ARGUMENT ...]

All of the single-character options used with the ‘set’ builtin
(*note The Set Builtin:😃 can be used as options when the shell is
invoked. In addition, there are several multi-character options that
you can use. These options must appear on the command line before the
single-character options to be recognized.

‘–debugger’
Arrange for the debugger profile to be executed before the shell
starts. Turns on extended debugging mode (see *note The Shopt
Builtin:: for a description of the ‘extdebug’ option to the ‘shopt’
builtin).

‘–dump-po-strings’
A list of all double-quoted strings preceded by ‘$’ is printed on
the standard output in the GNU ‘gettext’ PO (portable object) file
format. Equivalent to ‘-D’ except for the output format.

‘–dump-strings’
Equivalent to ‘-D’.

‘–help’
Display a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.

‘–init-file FILENAME’
‘–rcfile FILENAME’
Execute commands from FILENAME (instead of ‘~/.bashrc’) in an
interactive shell.

‘–login’
Equivalent to ‘-l’.

‘–noediting’
Do not use the GNU Readline library (*note Command Line Editing:😃
to read command lines when the shell is interactive.

‘–noprofile’
Don’t load the system-wide startup file ‘/etc/profile’ or any of
the personal initialization files ‘~/.bash_profile’,
‘~/.bash_login’, or ‘~/.profile’ when Bash is invoked as a login
shell.

‘–norc’
Don’t read the ‘~/.bashrc’ initialization file in an interactive
shell. This is on by default if the shell is invoked as ‘sh’.

‘–posix’
Change the behavior of Bash where the default operation differs
from the POSIX standard to match the standard. This is intended to
make Bash behave as a strict superset of that standard. *Note Bash
POSIX Mode::, for a description of the Bash POSIX mode.

‘–restricted’
Make the shell a restricted shell (*note The Restricted Shell:😃.

‘–rpm-requires’
Produce the list of files that are required for the shell script to
run. This implies ‘-n’ and is subject to the same limitations as
compile time error checking checking; Command substitutions,
Conditional expressions and ‘eval’ are not parsed so some
dependencies may be missed.

‘–verbose’
Equivalent to ‘-v’. Print shell input lines as they’re read.

‘–version’
Show version information for this instance of Bash on the standard
output and exit successfully.

There are several single-character options that may be supplied at
invocation which are not available with the ‘set’ builtin.

‘-c’
Read and execute commands from the first non-option argument
COMMAND_STRING, then exit. If there are arguments after the
COMMAND_STRING, the first argument is assigned to ‘$0’ and any
remaining arguments are assigned to the positional parameters. The
assignment to ‘$0’ sets the name of the shell, which is used in
warning and error messages.

‘-i’
Force the shell to run interactively. Interactive shells are
described in *note Interactive Shells::.

‘-l’
Make this shell act as if it had been directly invoked by login.
When the shell is interactive, this is equivalent to starting a
login shell with ‘exec -l bash’. When the shell is not
interactive, the login shell startup files will be executed. ‘exec
bash -l’ or ‘exec bash --login’ will replace the current shell with
a Bash login shell. *Note Bash Startup Files::, for a description
of the special behavior of a login shell.

‘-r’
Make the shell a restricted shell (*note The Restricted Shell:😃.

‘-s’
If this option is present, or if no arguments remain after option
processing, then commands are read from the standard input. This
option allows the positional parameters to be set when invoking an
interactive shell or when reading input through a pipe.

‘-D’
A list of all double-quoted strings preceded by ‘$’ is printed on
the standard output. These are the strings that are subject to
language translation when the current locale is not ‘C’ or ‘POSIX’
(*note Locale Translation:😃. This implies the ‘-n’ option; no
commands will be executed.

‘[-+]O [SHOPT_OPTION]’
SHOPT_OPTION is one of the shell options accepted by the ‘shopt’
builtin (*note The Shopt Builtin:😃. If SHOPT_OPTION is present,
‘-O’ sets the value of that option; ‘+O’ unsets it. If
SHOPT_OPTION is not supplied, the names and values of the shell
options accepted by ‘shopt’ are printed on the standard output. If
the invocation option is ‘+O’, the output is displayed in a format
that may be reused as input.

‘–’
A ‘–’ signals the end of options and disables further option
processing. Any arguments after the ‘–’ are treated as filenames
and arguments.

A login shell is one whose first character of argument zero is ‘-’,
or one invoked with the ‘–login’ option.

An interactive shell is one started without non-option arguments,
unless ‘-s’ is specified, without specifying the ‘-c’ option, and whose
input and output are both connected to terminals (as determined by
‘isatty(3)’), or one started with the ‘-i’ option. *Note Interactive
Shells::, for more information.

If arguments remain after option processing, and neither the ‘-c’ nor
the ‘-s’ option has been supplied, the first argument is assumed to be
the name of a file containing shell commands (*note Shell Scripts:😃.
When Bash is invoked in this fashion, ‘$0’ is set to the name of the
file, and the positional parameters are set to the remaining arguments.
Bash reads and executes commands from this file, then exits. Bash’s
exit status is the exit status of the last command executed in the
script. If no commands are executed, the exit status is 0.

File: bash.info, Node: Bash Startup Files, Next: Interactive Shells, Prev: Invoking Bash, Up: Bash Features

6.2 Bash Startup Files

This section describes how Bash executes its startup files. If any of
the files exist but cannot be read, Bash reports an error. Tildes are
expanded in filenames as described above under Tilde Expansion (*note
Tilde Expansion:😃.

Interactive shells are described in *note Interactive Shells::.

Invoked as an interactive login shell, or with ‘–login’
…

When Bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a
non-interactive shell with the ‘–login’ option, it first reads and
executes commands from the file ‘/etc/profile’, if that file exists.
After reading that file, it looks for ‘~/.bash_profile’,
‘~/.bash_login’, and ‘~/.profile’, in that order, and reads and executes
commands from the first one that exists and is readable. The
‘–noprofile’ option may be used when the shell is started to inhibit
this behavior.

When an interactive login shell exits, or a non-interactive login
shell executes the ‘exit’ builtin command, Bash reads and executes
commands from the file ‘~/.bash_logout’, if it exists.

Invoked as an interactive non-login shell
…

When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, Bash
reads and executes commands from ‘~/.bashrc’, if that file exists. This
may be inhibited by using the ‘–norc’ option. The ‘–rcfile FILE’
option will force Bash to read and execute commands from FILE instead of
‘~/.bashrc’.

So, typically, your ‘~/.bash_profile’ contains the line
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc; fi
after (or before) any login-specific initializations.

Invoked non-interactively
…

When Bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script, for
example, it looks for the variable ‘BASH_ENV’ in the environment,
expands its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value as
the name of a file to read and execute. Bash behaves as if the
following command were executed:
if [ -n “$BAS{H}_{E}NV"];then."$BASH_ENV”; fi
but the value of the ‘PATH’ variable is not used to search for the
filename.

As noted above, if a non-interactive shell is invoked with the
‘–login’ option, Bash attempts to read and execute commands from the
login shell startup files.

Invoked with name ‘sh’
…

If Bash is invoked with the name ‘sh’, it tries to mimic the startup
behavior of historical versions of ‘sh’ as closely as possible, while
conforming to the POSIX standard as well.

When invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive
shell with the ‘–login’ option, it first attempts to read and execute
commands from ‘/etc/profile’ and ‘~/.profile’, in that order. The
‘–noprofile’ option may be used to inhibit this behavior. When invoked
as an interactive shell with the name ‘sh’, Bash looks for the variable
‘ENV’, expands its value if it is defined, and uses the expanded value
as the name of a file to read and execute. Since