Shell Scripting
Intermediate Systems Administration DeCal
Lecture #6
Joshua Kwan
Today
• Unlock the raw power of the shell as a
programming language!
• How to use variables + special variables
• How to create functions
• Control structures: for, while, if, case
• Input functionality with read, shift
• Shell builtins: echo, printf, let, test (aka [ )
Shell scripts
• At their simplest, just a list of commands
executed in order as if you had typed them
into the shell.
• Anything you can do at the shell, you can
do in a shell script, and vice versa.
• Like DOS batch scripts, but way better.
• Run them by putting “#!/bin/sh” at the top
and using chmod +x to make executable.
Variables
• Assignment: FOO=“Test 1 2 3”
• Reference: echo $FOO or echo “$FOO”
(What’s the difference?)
• Want to set a variable to the output of a
command? Input substitution!
FOO=$(ls pictures)
Special Shell Variables
• $1, $2, $3.. - arguments passed in on
command line.
• $@ - all arguments as a big string.
• $# - number of arguments passed in
• $? - exit code of last program; you knew this
already
• $$ - your process ID
• $! - process ID of last program started w/ ‘&’
Functions
• When you make a shell script, lines of code
are executed top-to-bottom
• If you make functions, they won’t be run
though, just declared.You can use them as if
they were separate programs.
• Learn by example! We know enough to
write a simple program now.
Example 1
#!/bin/sh
confuciusprint() {
echo "Confucius say: \"$@\""
}
confuciusprint "Baseball wrong. Man with four balls cannot walk."
echo "OK, now it's your turn! Here's your quote:"
confuciusprint "$@"
echo "What if it were only the first word you said?"
confuciusprint "$1"
Control structures
• For loops set a variable based on the contets of a
list (like python, unlike C):
for x in $(seq 1 9); do touch $x;
done
• While loops test a condition and exit when the
condition is 1.You can also run a program...
while ! try_to_connect; do echo
“Trying to connect...”; done
• and if statements behave the same way (use a
conditional or a program), but they don’t loop
if [ $SUM -eq 0 ]; then echo Zero;
fi
Control structures
• You can have many conditional branches with
if: if ...; then ...; elif ...;
then ...; else ...; fi
• case statements; like switch in C, for many
nested ifs:
case “$x” in
[aA]) echo “a for anteater!” ;;
b|c) echo “you typed in b or c” ;;
*) echo “who knows what you typed”;;
esac
Conditionals
• In a previous example we did this:
if [ $SUM -eq 0 ]; then
echo Zero
fi
• This is a conditional, however it’s implemented
using a program called [ that evaluates the
condition and returns 0 or 1.
• test is the same thing, but it doesn’t require a
closing bracket. Personal taste.
if test $SUM -eq 0; then ...
Conditionals
• [ -n “$var” ]: returns true if $var is non-
blank (opposite: -z)
• [ “$var” -eq 1 ]: returns true if $var is a
number and is 1. (opposite: -ne)
• Ditto for -ge (greater/equal), -gt (greater than),
-le (less/equal), -lt (less than)
• [ “$var” = foo ]: returns true if $var equals
“foo” by string comparison. (opposite: !=)
• [ -f “file.txt” ]: returns true if file.txt
exists and is a file. No opposite; negate it, e.g.
[ ! -f “file.txt” ]
Input processing
• Want to use standard input? read var
will read one line of standard input into
$var. A typical construct:
while read line; do
do stuff with $line
done
Input processing
• You can also parse your command line
arguments one by one.
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
echo “$1”
shift
done
• shift will delete $1, and shift everything else
down. ($2 becomes $1, $3 becomes $2).
Then it decrements the value of $#.
Useful builtins
• The shell has several built-in programs for
very common tasks.
• echo: prints a line to the screen, you knew
this already.
• printf: does printf(3) style formatting on
text, e.g. printf ‘%02d’ “$tracknumber”
• let: changes variables, e.g. let “x=x+1”
changes $x
Image resizing example
#!/bin/sh
FILE="$1"
if [ ! -f "$FILE" ]; then
exit 1
fi
ID=$(identify "$FILE" | cut -d' ' -f3)
WIDTH=$(echo "$ID" | cut -dx -f1)
HEIGHT=$(echo "$ID" | cut -dx -f2)
let RATIO=”(WIDTH*100)/HEIGHT”
if [ "$RATIO" -eq 133 ]; then # landscape
mogrify -scale $2x$3 "$FILE"
elif [ "$RATIO" -eq 75 ]; then # portrait
mogrify -scale $3x$2 "$FILE"
fi
