How can I check if a variable is empty in Bash?
In Bash at least the following command tests if $var is empty:
if [[ -z "$var" ]]; then
# $var is empty, do what you want
fi
The command man test is your friend.
Presuming Bash:
var=""
if [ -n "$var" ]; then
echo "not empty"
else
echo "empty"
fi
I have also seen
if [ "x$variable" = "x" ]; then ...
which is obviously very robust and shell independent.
Also, there is a difference between "empty" and "unset". See How to tell if a string is not defined in a Bash shell script.
if [ ${foo:+1} ]
then
echo "yes"
fi
prints yes if the variable is set. ${foo:+1} will return 1 when the variable is set, otherwise it will return empty string.
[ "$variable" ] || echo empty
: ${variable="value_to_set_if_unset"}
if [[ "$variable" == "" ]] ...
The question asks how to check if a variable is an empty string and the best answers are already given for that.
But I landed here after a period passed programming in PHP, and I was actually searching for a check like the empty function in PHP working in a Bash shell.
After reading the answers I realized I was not thinking properly in Bash, but anyhow in that moment a function like empty in PHP would have been soooo handy in my Bash code.
As I think this can happen to others, I decided to convert the PHP empty function in Bash.
According to the PHP manual:
a variable is considered empty if it doesn't exist or if its value is one of the following:
"" (an empty string)
0 (0 as an integer)
0.0 (0 as a float)
"0" (0 as a string)
an empty array
a variable declared, but without a value
Of course the null and false cases cannot be converted in bash, so they are omitted.
function empty
{
local var="$1"
# Return true if:
# 1. var is a null string ("" as empty string)
# 2. a non set variable is passed
# 3. a declared variable or array but without a value is passed
# 4. an empty array is passed
if test -z "$var"
then
[[ $( echo "1" ) ]]
return
# Return true if var is zero (0 as an integer or "0" as a string)
elif [ "$var" == 0 2> /dev/null ]
then
[[ $( echo "1" ) ]]
return
# Return true if var is 0.0 (0 as a float)
elif [ "$var" == 0.0 2> /dev/null ]
then
[[ $( echo "1" ) ]]
return
fi
[[ $( echo "" ) ]]
}
Example of usage:
if empty "${var}"
then
echo "empty"
else
echo "not empty"
fi
Demo:
The following snippet:
#!/bin/bash
vars=(
""
0
0.0
"0"
1
"string"
" "
)
for (( i=0; i<${#vars[#]}; i++ ))
do
var="${vars[$i]}"
if empty "${var}"
then
what="empty"
else
what="not empty"
fi
echo "VAR \"$var\" is $what"
done
exit
outputs:
VAR "" is empty
VAR "0" is empty
VAR "0.0" is empty
VAR "0" is empty
VAR "1" is not empty
VAR "string" is not empty
VAR " " is not empty
Having said that in a Bash logic the checks on zero in this function can cause side problems imho, anyone using this function should evaluate this risk and maybe decide to cut those checks off leaving only the first one.
This will return true if a variable is unset or set to the empty string ("").
if [ -z "$MyVar" ]
then
echo "The variable MyVar has nothing in it."
elif ! [ -z "$MyVar" ]
then
echo "The variable MyVar has something in it."
fi
You may want to distinguish between unset variables and variables that are set and empty:
is_empty() {
local var_name="$1"
local var_value="${!var_name}"
if [[ -v "$var_name" ]]; then
if [[ -n "$var_value" ]]; then
echo "set and non-empty"
else
echo "set and empty"
fi
else
echo "unset"
fi
}
str="foo"
empty=""
is_empty str
is_empty empty
is_empty none
Result:
set and non-empty
set and empty
unset
BTW, I recommend using set -u which will cause an error when reading unset variables, this can save you from disasters such as
rm -rf $dir
You can read about this and other best practices for a "strict mode" here.
To check if variable v is not set
if [ "$v" == "" ]; then
echo "v not set"
fi
elif [ "$arg" == "--file" ] || [ "$arg" == "-f" ] && [[ read var ]]
then
touch $var
I'm writing a bash script which takes in a command-line input, either long-form or short-form along with the file name to create an empty file with touch command. the above snippet is what I tried to do, but there's an error unary "read: unary operator expected".please help
This happens for most commands:
$ [[ echo "hello world" ]]
bash: conditional binary operator expected
bash: syntax error near `world"'
This is because [[ .. ]] should be used to compare values, and not to run commands. To run a command, don't wrap it in anything:
$ echo "hello world"
hello world
Applied to your example:
echo "You are expected to type in a value, but you will receive no prompt."
arg="-f"
if [ "$arg" == "--file" ] || [ "$arg" == "-f" ] && read var
then
echo "You entered: $var"
fi
Bash needs to know that it's running a whole command
To make bash aware that it's running a command you can use the backtick syntax (not recommended) or the preferred $() command substitution syntax. Without this syntax, bash is assuming that you're putting two separate strings inside of that condition.
The error you're getting is saying that you are trying to compare two strings without an operator to do so (i.e. -eq or ==).
Here is an example of how to make it recognize your commands:
elif [[ ... ]] && [[ $(read var) ]]
then
However, this won't work. This will evaluate to false. This is because you haven't printed anything out and as such an empty string ("") is falsey.
echo your variable to test its value
elif [[ ... ]] && [[ $(read var; echo $var) ]]
then
This will read into the variable and then test if the user has typed anything into it. If the user doesn't type anything, it will evaluate to false, otherwise, it will evaluate to true and run the body of the elif statement.
I am executing my url through shell script and storing the response in a variable.
http://hostname.domain.com:8080/beat
After hitting the above url, I will be getting the below response which I need to parse it and extract value of state from it
num_retries_allowed: 3 count: 30 count_behind: 100 state: POST_INIT num_rounds: 60 hour_col: 2 day_col: 0
Now I am extracting value of state variable from the above string using grep.
#send the request, put response in variable
DATA=$(wget -O - -q -t 1 http://hostname.domain.com:8080/beat)
#grep $DATA for state
state=$(grep -oP 'state: \K\S+' <<< "$DATA")
[[ -z "$state" ]] && state=0
echo $state
Also if in $DATA variable state: string is not there by any chance, then I want to assign 0 to state variable. After that I want to verify the conditionals and exit out of the script depending on that.
If state is equal to POST_INIT then exit successfully out of the shell script or if state is equal to 0, then exit successfully as well.
if [[ $state -eq "POST_INIT" || $state -eq "0" ]]; then exit 0; fi
So my above if condition is not working somehow. Since what I have noticed is if my state variable value is IN_INIT, then also it is exiting out of the shell script? Is there anything wrong I am doing here in the string comparison?
-eq is for comparing numbers. = is for comparing strings.
If you were using [ instead of [[ you would be getting an error for a value of POST_INIT and IN_INIT.
$ state=POST_INIT
$ [ $state -eq 0 ]
-bash: [: POST_INIT: integer expression expected
$ echo $?
2
What I believe [[ is doing is actually being more clever and more annoying.
I believe it is expanding the variable and then using the expanded value in an arithmetic context (in which variables are expanded even from bare words) and since the variable POST_INIT doesn't have a value that gets expanded to 0 by default and your check passes.
$ state=POST_INIT
$ [[ $state -eq 0 ]]; echo $?
0
$ POST_INIT=5
$ [[ $state -eq 0 ]]; echo $?
1
$ POST_INIT=0
$ [[ $state -eq 0 ]]; echo $?
0
trying this
if [[ "$state" == "POST_INIT" || "$state" == "0" ]];
will help because if you use something like [ $state == "POST_INIT" ] , it ignores $state if it is null and would rather read the statement as [ == "POST_INIT". including " " ,prevents that case.
then, elif, else statement that I have programmed in a bash script. I know that it works because I can run the same command in the terminal interface and see that it is doing what I want it to do. However when I run it in a script it seems to always jump to the else statement and not detect anything. Can anybody help explain why this is so? Here is my script code:
if [ -e "$1" ]
then
for line in `samtools view -H $1`
do
if [[ "$line" == *NCBI-Build-36\.1* ]]
then
echo "hg18"
break
elif [[ "$line" == *hg19* ]]
then
echo "hg19"
break
else
echo "Reference was not found, manual entry required: "
read ans
echo "$ans"
break
fi
done
else
echo -e "Usage: \e[1;32mreadRef.sh \e[1;36mbamfile.bam"
fi
No matter what file I plug in it always skips to the else and asks me for manual entry.
Here is the command I ran on terminal:
for line in `samtools view -H $bignormal`; do if [[ "$line" == *NCBI-Build-36\.1* ]]; then echo "YES - $line"; else echo "NO - $line"; fi; done
And the output is like this:
NO - #HD
NO - VN:1.0
NO - GO:none
NO - SO:coordinate
NO - #SQ
NO - SN:1
NO - LN:247249719
YES - AS:NCBI-Build-36.1
YES - UR:http://www.bcgsc.ca/downloads/genomes/9606/NCBI-Build-36.1/bwa_ind/genome/
NO - SP:Homo
NO - sapiens
.
.
.
Why is the script not detecting the string I am looking for, but it is in terminal?
EDIT:
I tried what Charles said, this is the output:
:+'[' -e /projects/rcorbettprj2/DLBCL/CNV/RG065/normal/A01440_8_lanes_dupsFlagged.bam ']'
::+samtools view -H /projects/rcorbettprj2/DLBCL/CNV/RG065/normal/A01440_8_lanes_dupsFlagged.bam
:+for line in '`samtools view -H $1`'
:+case "$line" in
:+echo 'Reference was not found, manual entry required: '
Reference was not found, manual entry required:
:+read ans
I think your code has a logic error nobody's spotted yet. I'm not sure, since you haven't told us what the script's supposed to be doing, but it looks to me like what you want is to ask for manual entry only if you don't find a match to either of your patterns anywhere in the output, but what you're actually doing is examining only the first word of output for a match. And from your sample output, the first word is "#HD", which doesn't match either pattern, so the script is doing exactly what I'd expect.
Now, assuming I'm right and that the point is to look for either pattern anywhere in the output, you can actually simplify things a bit. Mainly, you don't need the loop, you can just do a single comparison to look for the pattern in the entire output at once:
#!/bin/bash
if [ -e "$1" ]
then
output="$(samtools view -H "$1")"
if [[ "$output" == *NCBI-Build-36.1* ]]
then
echo "hg18"
elif [[ "$output" == *hg19* ]]
then
echo "hg19"
else
read -p "Reference was not found, manual entry required: " ans
echo "$ans"
fi
done
else
echo -e "Usage: \e[1;32mreadRef.sh \e[1;36mbamfile.bam"
fi
I am trying to write a script in bash that check the validity of a user input.
I want to match the input (say variable x) to a list of valid values.
what I have come up with at the moment is:
for item in $list
do
if [ "$x" == "$item" ]; then
echo "In the list"
exit
fi
done
My question is if there is a simpler way to do this,
something like a list.contains(x) for most programming languages.
Say list is:
list="11 22 33"
my code will echo the message only for those values since list is treated as an array and not a string,
all the string manipulations will validate 1 while I would want it to fail.
[[ $list =~ (^|[[:space:]])$x($|[[:space:]]) ]] && echo 'yes' || echo 'no'
or create a function:
contains() {
[[ $1 =~ (^|[[:space:]])$2($|[[:space:]]) ]] && exit(0) || exit(1)
}
to use it:
contains aList anItem
echo $? # 0： match, 1: failed
how about
echo $list | grep -w -q $x
you could either check the output or $? of above line to make the decision.
grep -w checks on whole word patterns. Adding -q prevents echoing the list.
Matvey is right, but you should quote $x and consider any kind of "spaces" (e.g. new line) with
[[ $list =~ (^|[[:space:]])"$x"($|[[:space:]]) ]] && echo 'yes' || echo 'no'
so, i.e.
# list_include_item "10 11 12" "2"
function list_include_item {
local list="$1"
local item="$2"
if [[ $list =~ (^|[[:space:]])"$item"($|[[:space:]]) ]] ; then
# yes, list include item
result=0
else
result=1
fi
return $result
}
end then
`list_include_item "10 11 12" "12"` && echo "yes" || echo "no"
or
if `list_include_item "10 11 12" "1"` ; then
echo "yes"
else
echo "no"
fi
Note that you must use "" in case of variables:
`list_include_item "$my_list" "$my_item"` && echo "yes" || echo "no"
IMHO easiest solution is to prepend and append the original string with a space and check against a regex with [[ ]]
haystack='foo bar'
needle='bar'
if [[ " $haystack " =~ .*\ $needle\ .* ]]; then
...
fi
this will not be false positive on values with values containing the needle as a substring, e.g. with a haystack foo barbaz.
(The concept is shamelessly stolen form JQuery's hasClass()-Method)
You can use (* wildcards) outside a case statement, too, if you use double brackets:
string='My string';
if [[ $string == *My* ]]
then
echo "It's there!";
fi
If it isn't too long; you can just string them between equality along a logical OR comparison like so.
if [ $ITEM == "item1" -o $ITEM == "item2" -o $ITEM == "item3" ]; then
echo In the list
fi
I had this exact problem and while the above is ugly it is more obvious what is going on than the other generalized solutions.
If your list of values is to be hard-coded in the script, it's fairly simple to test using case. Here's a short example, which you can adapt to your requirements:
for item in $list
do
case "$x" in
item1|item2)
echo "In the list"
;;
not_an_item)
echo "Error" >&2
exit 1
;;
esac
done
If the list is an array variable at runtime, one of the other answers is probably a better fit.
There's a cleaner way to check if string is in the list:
if [[ $my_str = #(str1|str2|str3) ]]; then
echo "string found"
fi
Consider exploiting the keys of associative arrays. I would presume this outperforms both regex/pattern matching and looping, although I haven't profiled it.
declare -A list=( [one]=1 [two]=two [three]='any non-empty value' )
for value in one two three four
do
echo -n "$value is "
# a missing key expands to the null string,
# and we've set each interesting key to a non-empty value
[[ -z "${list[$value]}" ]] && echo -n '*not* '
echo "a member of ( ${!list[*]} )"
done
Output:
one is a member of ( one two three )
two is a member of ( one two three )
three is a member of ( one two three )
four is *not* a member of ( one two three )
If the list is fixed in the script, I like the following the best:
validate() {
grep -F -q -x "$1" <<EOF
item 1
item 2
item 3
EOF
}
Then use validate "$x" to test if $x is allowed.
If you want a one-liner, and don't care about whitespace in item names, you can use this (notice -w instead of -x):
validate() { echo "11 22 33" | grep -F -q -w "$1"; }
Notes:
This is POSIX sh compliant.
validate does not accept substrings (remove the -x option to grep if you want that).
validate interprets its argument as a fixed string, not a regular
expression (remove the -F option to grep if you want that).
Sample code to exercise the function:
for x in "item 1" "item2" "item 3" "3" "*"; do
echo -n "'$x' is "
validate "$x" && echo "valid" || echo "invalid"
done
I find it's easier to use the form echo $LIST | xargs -n1 echo | grep $VALUE as illustrated below:
LIST="ITEM1 ITEM2"
VALUE="ITEM1"
if [ -n "`echo $LIST | xargs -n1 echo | grep -e \"^$VALUE`$\" ]; then
...
fi
This works for a space-separated list, but you could adapt it to any other delimiter (like :) by doing the following:
LIST="ITEM1:ITEM2"
VALUE="ITEM1"
if [ -n "`echo $LIST | sed 's|:|\\n|g' | grep -e \"^$VALUE`$\"`" ]; then
...
fi
Note that the " are required for the test to work.
Thought I'd add my solution to the list.
# Checks if element "$1" is in array "$2"
# #NOTE:
# Be sure that array is passed in the form:
# "${ARR[#]}"
elementIn () {
# shopt -s nocasematch # Can be useful to disable case-matching
local e
for e in "${#:2}"; do [[ "$e" == "$1" ]] && return 0; done
return 1
}
# Usage:
list=(11 22 33)
item=22
if elementIn "$item" "${list[#]}"; then
echo TRUE;
else
echo FALSE
fi
# TRUE
item=44
elementIn $item "${list[#]}" && echo TRUE || echo FALSE
# FALSE
The shell built-in compgen can help here. It can take a list with the -W flag and return any of the potential matches it finds.
# My list can contain spaces so I want to set the internal
# file separator to newline to preserve the original strings.
IFS=$'\n'
# Create a list of acceptable strings.
accept=( 'foo' 'bar' 'foo bar' )
# The string we will check
word='foo'
# compgen will return a list of possible matches of the
# variable 'word' with the best match being first.
compgen -W "${accept[*]}" "$word"
# Returns:
# foo
# foo bar
We can write a function to test if a string equals the best match of acceptable strings. This allows you to return a 0 or 1 for a pass or fail respectively.
function validate {
local IFS=$'\n'
local accept=( 'foo' 'bar' 'foo bar' )
if [ "$1" == "$(compgen -W "${accept[*]}" "$1" | head -1)" ] ; then
return 0
else
return 1
fi
}
Now you can write very clean tests to validate if a string is acceptable.
validate "blah" || echo unacceptable
if validate "foo" ; then
echo acceptable
else
echo unacceptable
fi
Prior answers don't use tr which I found to be useful with grep. Assuming that the items in the list are space delimited, to check for an exact match:
echo $mylist | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -F -x -q "$myitem"
This will return exit code 0 if the item is in the list, or exit code 1 if it isn't.
It's best to use it as a function:
_contains () { # Check if space-separated list $1 contains line $2
echo "$1" | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -F -x -q "$2"
}
mylist="aa bb cc"
# Positive check
if _contains "${mylist}" "${myitem}"; then
echo "in list"
fi
# Negative check
if ! _contains "${mylist}" "${myitem}"; then
echo "not in list"
fi
Late to the show? Following very easy variant was not clearly mentioned yet. I use case for checking simple lists, which is a general Bourne Shell idiom not relying on anything external nor extended:
haystack='a b c'
needle='b'
case " $haystack " in (*" $needle "*) :;; (*) false;; esac
Please note the use of the separator (here: SPC) to correcyly delimit the pattern: At the beginning and end of " $haystack " and likewise in the test of " $needle ".
This statement returns true ($?=0) in case $needle is in $haystack, false otherwise.
Also you can test for more than one $needle very easily. When there are several similar cases like
if (haystack.contains(needle1)) { run1() } elif (haystack.contains(needle2)) { run2() } else { run3() }
you can wrap this into the case, too:
case " $haystack " in (*" $needle1 "*) run1;; (*" $needle2 "*) run2;; (*) run3;; esac
and so on
This also works for all lists with values which do not include the separator itself, like comma:
haystack=' a , b , c '
needle=' b '
case ",$haystack," in (*",$needle,"*) :;; (*) false;; esac
Note that if values can contain anything including the separator sequence (except NUL, as shells do not suport NUL in variables as you cannot pass arguments containing NUL to commands) then you need to use arrays. Arrays are ksh/bashisms and not supported by "ordinary" POSIX/Bourne shells. (You can work around this limitation using $# in POSIX-Shells, but this is something completely different than what was aked here.)
Can the (*) false part be left away?
No, as this is the critical return value. By default case returns true.
Yes if you do not need the return value and put your processing at the location of the :
Why the :;;
We could also write true;;, but I am used to use : instead of true because it is shorter and faster to type
Also I consider not writing anything bad practice, as it is not obvious to everybody that the default return value of case is true.
Also "leaving out" the command usually indicates "something was forgotten here". So putting a redundant ":" there clearly indicates "it is intended to do nothing else than return true here".
In bash you can also use ksh/bashisms like ;& (fallthroug) or ;;& (test other patterns) to express if (haystack.contains(needle1)) { run1(); }; if (haystack.contains(needle2)) { run2(); }
Hence usually case is much more maintainable than other regex constructs. Also it does not use regex, it only use shell patterns, which might even be faster.
Reusable function:
: Needle "list" Seperator_opt
NeedleListSep()
{
if [ 3 -gt $# ];
then NeedleListSep "$1" "$2" " ";
else case "$3$2$3" in (*"$3$1$3"*) return 0;; esac; return 1;
fi;
}
In bash you can simplify this to
: Needle "list" Seperator_opt
NeedleListSep()
{
local s="${3-" "}";
case "$s$2$s" in (*"$s$1$s"*) return 0;; esac; return 1;
}
Use like this
Test() {
NeedleListSep "$1" "a b c" && echo found $1 || echo no $1;
NeedleListSep "$1" "a,b,c" ',' && echo found $1 || echo no $1;
NeedleListSep "$1" "a # b # c" ' # ' && echo found $1 || echo no $1;
NeedleListSep "$1" "abc" '' && echo found $1 || echo no $1;
}
Test a
Test z
As shown above, this also works for degerated cases where the separator is the empty string (so each character of the list is a needle). Example:
Test
returns
no
no
no
found
As the empty string is cleary part of abc in case your separator is the empty string, right?
Note that this function is Public Domain as there is absolutely nothing to it which can be genuinely copyrighted.
An alternative solution inspired by the accepted response, but that uses an inverted logic:
MODE="${1}"
echo "<${MODE}>"
[[ "${MODE}" =~ ^(preview|live|both)$ ]] && echo "OK" || echo "Uh?"
Here, the input ($MODE) must be one of the options in the regular expression ('preview', 'live', or 'both'), contrary to matching the whole options list to the user input. Of course, you do not expect the regular expression to change.
Examples
$ in_list super test me out
NO
$ in_list "super dude" test me out
NO
$ in_list "super dude" test me "super dude"
YES
# How to use in another script
if [ $(in_list $1 OPTION1 OPTION2) == "NO" ]
then
echo "UNKNOWN type for param 1: Should be OPTION1 or OPTION2"
exit;
fi
in_list
function show_help()
{
IT=$(CAT <<EOF
usage: SEARCH_FOR {ITEM1} {ITEM2} {ITEM3} ...
e.g.
a b c d -> NO
a b a d -> YES
"test me" how "test me" -> YES
)
echo "$IT"
exit
}
if [ "$1" == "help" ]
then
show_help
fi
if [ "$#" -eq 0 ]; then
show_help
fi
SEARCH_FOR=$1
shift;
for ITEM in "$#"
do
if [ "$SEARCH_FOR" == "$ITEM" ]
then
echo "YES"
exit;
fi
done
echo "NO"
Assuming TARGET variable can be only 'binomial' or 'regression', then following would do:
# Check for modeling types known to this script
if [ $( echo "${TARGET}" | egrep -c "^(binomial|regression)$" ) -eq 0 ]; then
echo "This scoring program can only handle 'binomial' and 'regression' methods now." >&2
usage
fi
You could add more strings into the list by separating them with a | (pipe) character.
Advantage of using egrep, is that you could easily add case insensitivity (-i), or check more complex scenarios with a regular expression.
This is almost your original proposal but almost a 1-liner. Not that complicated as other valid answers, and not so depending on bash versions (can work with old bashes).
OK=0 ; MP_FLAVOURS="vanilla lemon hazelnut straciatella"
for FLAV in $MP_FLAVOURS ; do [ $FLAV == $FLAVOR ] && { OK=1 ; break; } ; done
[ $OK -eq 0 ] && { echo "$FLAVOR not a valid value ($MP_FLAVOURS)" ; exit 1 ; }
I guess my proposal can still be improved, both in length and style.
Simple oneliner...
if [[ " 11 22 33 " == *" ${x} "* ]]; then echo "${x} is in the list"; fi;
Add before fi: else echo "${x} is NOT in the list";
The script below implements contains function for a list.
function contains {
local target=$1
shift
printf '%s\n' "$#" | grep -x -q "$target"
out=$?
(( out = 1 - out ))
return $out
}
If you convert a string based on white space into a list and use it, it seems to be solved as follows.
list="11 22 33"
IFS=" " read -ra parsed_list <<< "$list"
# parsed_list would be ("11" "22" "33")
contains "11" "${parsed_list[#]}"
echo $? # 1
contains "22" "${parsed_list[#]}"
echo $? # 1
contains "1" "${parsed_list[#]}"
echo $? # 0
contains "11 22" "${parsed_list[#]}"
echo $? # 0