Bash Examples: Basic Information and Control Structures

WIP Alert This is a work in progress. Current information is correct but more content may be added in the future.

Shebang

add this to the start of every script.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

If then else

spaces before and after [[ and before ]] are important!

if [[ condition ]];then
    # do stuff
elif [[ other condition ]]; then
    # something else
else
    # or do this 
fi

If then else with grep matches

Does $PATH include "some_string"?

if echo $PATH | grep -q "some_string"; then
    echo "matches!"
else
    echo "no matches"
fi

If not

Spaces are important!

if [[ ! condition ]];then
    # do stuff
fi;

AND operator

TODO

OR operator

TODO

Access command-line arguments

$# is the number of arguments provided to the current script

$0 is the script name

$1, $2, $3 and so on until $9 are the first argument, second argument, third argument and so on.

Function definition

function do_something {
    echo "this gets printed to standard output"
}

# to call it, just use its name
do_something

Function with parameters

It's the same thing as the item above (acessing command-line arguments): $1 is the first parameter, $2 is the second one, etc etc.

function say_something {
    echo "$1"
}

$ say_something "foobar"
# prints "foobar"

$ say_something
# prints nothing

$ say_something foo bar
# prints "foo" (other arguments weren't accessed)

Number of parameters passed to function

$# returns the number of parmeters passed

myfunction(){
    if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
      # no parameters passed
    elif [[ $# -eq 1 ]]; then
      # 1 parameter passed
    else
      # 2 or more parameters passed
    fi
}

Check if command exists

For example, the program deactivate is enabled if you have an active python virtual environment.

If you wish to test whether the current user is in a virtual env, one way is to test whether the command deactivate exists, you can use the type builtin and test its result;

# piping the output of this command to dev null
# to avoid noise
ret=$(type deactivate &> /dev/null)

if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then
  echo "we're in a virtual env"
else
  echo "no virtualenv" 
fi