Bash GNU Bash Reference

Note: This document is not complete and completed progressivly with the time passing and using them in the projects such as QuantFE

Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, for the GNU operating system.

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.

Basic Shell Features

Shell Operation

graph LR
  A[Read Input]
  
  subgraph B [Tokens]
    direction RL
    B1(Words)
    B2(Operators)
  end
  
  C[Commands]
  
  subgraph D [Expanded Tokens]
  direction RL
    D1(Filenames)
    D2(Commands)
    D3(Arguments)
  end
  
  F[Redirections]
  G[Command Execution]
  H[Collect Exit Status]

  A -->|Quoting|B -->|parsing|C
  C -->|Shell Expansions| D
  D3 --> F
  D2 --> G
 

Quoting

Quoting is used to remove the special meaning of certain characters or words to the shell.

There are three quoting mechanisms: the escape character, single quotes, and double quotes.

%%{init: {'theme':'forest'}}%%
flowchart LR
A[Quoting Mechanisims] -->B[espcape character \] & C[single quotes ' '] & D["double #quot; #quot;"]

Shell Commands

Reserved Words

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.

Simple Commands

command arg1 arg2 ... argn

Pipelines

The format for a pipeline is

command1 | command2
command1 |& command2

[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 command1.

The reserved word time causes timing statistics to be printed for the pipeline once it finishes.

List of Commands

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.

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.

Compound Commands

Looping Constructs

until:

until test-commands; do consequent-commands; done

whilte:

while test-commands; do consequent-commands; done

for:

for name [ [in [words ...] ] ; ] do commands; done

An alternate form of the for command is also supported:

for (( expr1 ; expr2 ; expr3)) ; do commands ; done

Conditional Constructs

if:

if test-commands; then
	consequent-commands;
[elif more-test-commands; then
	more-consequents;]
[else alternate-consequents;]
fi

case:

case word in 
	[(] pattern [| pattern]…) command-list ;;]…
esac

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.

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

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

((…)):

(( expression ))

If the value of the expression is non-zero, the return status is 0; otherwise the return status is 1.

[[…]]:

[[ expression ]]

Return a status of 0 or 1 depending on the evaluation of the conditional expression expression.

[[ $line =~ [[:space:]]*(a)?b ]]

That means values for line like ‘aab’, ‘ aaaaaab’, ‘xaby’, and ‘ ab’ will all match, as will a line containing a ‘b’ anywhere in its value.

If you want to match ‘initial string’ at the start of a line, the following will work:

[[ $line =~ ^"initial string" ]]

but this will not:

[[ $line =~ "^initial string" ]]

because in the second example the ‘^’ is quoted and doesn’t have its usual special meaning.

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.

Shell Built-in Commands

Shell Variables

Bash Features

Job Control

Command Line Editing

Using History Interactivly