This is a resume of this course :
https://www.shellscript.sh/index.html
WHAT SHELL SHOULD I USE? :
#!/bin/sh
This simple code tell the compiler on what shell we should run the code, in this case the bash shell, there are more shells and in the linux section of the site you can find other examples
COMMENTS:
# This is a comment!
echo "hello world" #This is a comment too!
CREATE A FILE FOR THE SCRIPT
$ nano file_name.sh
CHMOD TO BE ABLE TO RUN IT
In order to run your script your script must be executable, to do so you can use the command CHMOD
$ chmod 755 file_name.sh
use ./ to run it
In order to run your script (as a script) you cant do just symply
$ file_name.sh #This will not work
Because the shell will try to find a command called file_name.sh that doesnt exist, but you can do it this way
$ ./file_name.sh #This will work
VARIABLES IN THE SHELL
Like most of the programming languages the shell can have variables, and there are some things to know about variables in shell
1. NO $ in declaration BUT YES on the use
Example:
#!/bin/sh Myvar="hello world" echo $Myvar
2 ALL Variable type are accepted
#!/bin/sh Myvar="String" Myvar=12 Myvar=12.45 Myvar="12.45" Myvar=string
All the variables are transformed in string after declaration
Note though that special characters must be properly escaped to avoid interpretation by the shell.
“This is discussed further in Chapter 6, Escape Characters.”
3 RESPECT THE CONTENT
Even if all variables are strings , you must respect the content, If in your variable there is string (with no number) you just cant add 1
#!/bin/sh echo "Tell me a number?" read my_num #THIS WILL ASK FOR A NUMBER add="10" result=`expr $my_num + $add` echo "Hello, your number is $my_num and i have calculated: $result"
If we give him a number this will work normally and will print out the result, but if we dont
Tell me a number? kerl #Text input expr: non-integer argument #Error!! Hello, your number is kerl and i have calculated: #The program dont stop even if there is an error
So we learn 2 things: 1 READ is used to read an user input and that even if there is a Error linux shell dont stop.
4 READ
As we have see before we can use READ to read an input from the user:
#!/bin/sh echo "Tell me a number?" read my_num #THIS WILL ASK FOR A NUMBER echo "Your number is $my_num"
5 NO DECLARATION
All the variables actually NEVER GET DECLARATED, you can call a variable that doesn’t exist and still get an empty string, this means that you dont have never ever declarations, but the big difference is that you need to avoid the $ symbol when you try to put value in the variable
a="hello" a="world" echo $a #this will print world
While this one will not work
a="hello" $a="world" echo $a #this will print hello and an Error
6 THE “${VAR}_SUFFIX” STRUCTURE
Another example of an easy mistake to make with shell scripts. One other thing worth mentioning at this point about variables, is to consider the following shell script:
#!/bin/sh echo "What is your name?" read USER_NAME echo "Hello $USER_NAME" echo "I will create you a file called $USER_NAME_file" touch $USER_NAME_file
Think about what result you would expect. For example, if you enter “steve” as your USER_NAME, should the script create steve_file?
Actually, no. This will cause an error unless there is a variable called USER_NAME_file. The shell does not know where the variable ends and the rest starts. How can we define this?
The answer is, that we enclose the variable itself in curly brackets:
#!/bin/sh echo "What is your name?" read USER_NAME echo "Hello $USER_NAME" echo "I will create you a file called ${USER_NAME}_file" touch "${USER_NAME}_file"
The shell now knows that we are referring to the variable USER_NAME and that we want it suffixed with “_file“. This can be the downfall of many a new shell script programmer, as the source of the problem can be difficult to track down.
Also note the quotes around "${USER_NAME}_file" – if the user entered “Steve Parker” (note the space) then without the quotes, the arguments passed to touch would be Steve and Parker_file – that is, we’d effectively be saying touch Steve Parker_file, which is two files to be touched, not one. The quotes avoid this. Thanks to Chris for highlighting this.