$ bash argcnt.sh this is a "real live" test
is
real live
(to display only paired arguments)
Because, I know only in this way:
#!/bin/bash
echo "$2"
echo "$4"
It seems like you want to print every other argument given to the script. You could then create a loop over $#:
#!/bin/bash
# idx will be 2, 4, 6 ... for as long as it's less than the number of arguments given
for ((idx = 2; idx < ${##}; idx += 2))
do
# variable indirection below:
echo "${!idx}"
done
Note: You can use $# instead of ${##} to get the number of elements in $# too. I don't know which one that is preferred by people in general.
If what you want is print every other argument, starting from the second, you can use shift:
$ cat argcnt
#!/bin/bash
while shift; do printf '%s\n' "$1"; shift; done
$ ./argcnt this is a "real live" test foo
is
real live
foo
How do I iterate over a range of numbers in Bash when the range is given by a variable?
I know I can do this (called "sequence expression" in the Bash documentation):
for i in {1..5}; do echo $i; done
Which gives:
1
2
3
4
5
Yet, how can I replace either of the range endpoints with a variable? This doesn't work:
END=5
for i in {1..$END}; do echo $i; done
Which prints:
{1..5}
for i in $(seq 1 $END); do echo $i; done
edit: I prefer seq over the other methods because I can actually remember it ;)
The seq method is the simplest, but Bash has built-in arithmetic evaluation.
END=5
for ((i=1;i<=END;i++)); do
echo $i
done
# ==> outputs 1 2 3 4 5 on separate lines
The for ((expr1;expr2;expr3)); construct works just like for (expr1;expr2;expr3) in C and similar languages, and like other ((expr)) cases, Bash treats them as arithmetic.
discussion
Using seq is fine, as Jiaaro suggested. Pax Diablo suggested a Bash loop to avoid calling a subprocess, with the additional advantage of being more memory friendly if $END is too large. Zathrus spotted a typical bug in the loop implementation, and also hinted that since i is a text variable, continuous conversions to-and-fro numbers are performed with an associated slow-down.
integer arithmetic
This is an improved version of the Bash loop:
typeset -i i END
let END=5 i=1
while ((i<=END)); do
echo $i
…
let i++
done
If the only thing that we want is the echo, then we could write echo $((i++)).
ephemient taught me something: Bash allows for ((expr;expr;expr)) constructs. Since I've never read the whole man page for Bash (like I've done with the Korn shell (ksh) man page, and that was a long time ago), I missed that.
So,
typeset -i i END # Let's be explicit
for ((i=1;i<=END;++i)); do echo $i; done
seems to be the most memory-efficient way (it won't be necessary to allocate memory to consume seq's output, which could be a problem if END is very large), although probably not the “fastest”.
the initial question
eschercycle noted that the {a..b} Bash notation works only with literals; true, accordingly to the Bash manual. One can overcome this obstacle with a single (internal) fork() without an exec() (as is the case with calling seq, which being another image requires a fork+exec):
for i in $(eval echo "{1..$END}"); do
Both eval and echo are Bash builtins, but a fork() is required for the command substitution (the $(…) construct).
Here is why the original expression didn't work.
From man bash:
Brace expansion is performed before
any other expansions, and any
characters special to other
expansions are preserved in the
result. It is strictly textual. Bash
does not apply any syntactic
interpretation to the context of
the expansion or the text between the
braces.
So, brace expansion is something done early as a purely textual macro operation, before parameter expansion.
Shells are highly optimized hybrids between macro processors and more formal programming languages. In order to optimize the typical use cases, the language is made rather more complex and some limitations are accepted.
Recommendation
I would suggest sticking with Posix1 features. This means using for i in <list>; do, if the list is already known, otherwise, use while or seq, as in:
#!/bin/sh
limit=4
i=1; while [ $i -le $limit ]; do
echo $i
i=$(($i + 1))
done
# Or -----------------------
for i in $(seq 1 $limit); do
echo $i
done
1. Bash is a great shell and I use it interactively, but I don't put bash-isms into my scripts. Scripts might need a faster shell, a more secure one, a more embedded-style one. They might need to run on whatever is installed as /bin/sh, and then there are all the usual pro-standards arguments. Remember shellshock, aka bashdoor?
The POSIX way
If you care about portability, use the example from the POSIX standard:
i=2
end=5
while [ $i -le $end ]; do
echo $i
i=$(($i+1))
done
Output:
2
3
4
5
Things which are not POSIX:
(( )) without dollar, although it is a common extension as mentioned by POSIX itself.
[[. [ is enough here. See also: What is the difference between single and double square brackets in Bash?
for ((;;))
seq (GNU Coreutils)
{start..end}, and that cannot work with variables as mentioned by the Bash manual.
let i=i+1: POSIX 7 2. Shell Command Language does not contain the word let, and it fails on bash --posix 4.3.42
the dollar at i=$i+1 might be required, but I'm not sure. POSIX 7 2.6.4 Arithmetic Expansion says:
If the shell variable x contains a value that forms a valid integer constant, optionally including a leading plus or minus sign, then the arithmetic expansions "$((x))" and "$(($x))" shall return the same value.
but reading it literally that does not imply that $((x+1)) expands since x+1 is not a variable.
You can use
for i in $(seq $END); do echo $i; done
Another layer of indirection:
for i in $(eval echo {1..$END}); do
∶
I've combined a few of the ideas here and measured performance.
TL;DR Takeaways:
seq and {..} are really fast
for and while loops are slow
$( ) is slow
for (( ; ; )) loops are slower
$(( )) is even slower
Worrying about N numbers in memory (seq or {..}) is silly (at least up to 1 million.)
These are not conclusions. You would have to look at the C code behind each of these to draw conclusions. This is more about how we tend to use each of these mechanisms for looping over code. Most single operations are close enough to being the same speed that it's not going to matter in most cases. But a mechanism like for (( i=1; i<=1000000; i++ )) is many operations as you can visually see. It is also many more operations per loop than you get from for i in $(seq 1 1000000). And that may not be obvious to you, which is why doing tests like this is valuable.
Demos
# show that seq is fast
$ time (seq 1 1000000 | wc)
1000000 1000000 6888894
real 0m0.227s
user 0m0.239s
sys 0m0.008s
# show that {..} is fast
$ time (echo {1..1000000} | wc)
1 1000000 6888896
real 0m1.778s
user 0m1.735s
sys 0m0.072s
# Show that for loops (even with a : noop) are slow
$ time (for i in {1..1000000} ; do :; done | wc)
0 0 0
real 0m3.642s
user 0m3.582s
sys 0m0.057s
# show that echo is slow
$ time (for i in {1..1000000} ; do echo $i; done | wc)
1000000 1000000 6888896
real 0m7.480s
user 0m6.803s
sys 0m2.580s
$ time (for i in $(seq 1 1000000) ; do echo $i; done | wc)
1000000 1000000 6888894
real 0m7.029s
user 0m6.335s
sys 0m2.666s
# show that C-style for loops are slower
$ time (for (( i=1; i<=1000000; i++ )) ; do echo $i; done | wc)
1000000 1000000 6888896
real 0m12.391s
user 0m11.069s
sys 0m3.437s
# show that arithmetic expansion is even slower
$ time (i=1; e=1000000; while [ $i -le $e ]; do echo $i; i=$(($i+1)); done | wc)
1000000 1000000 6888896
real 0m19.696s
user 0m18.017s
sys 0m3.806s
$ time (i=1; e=1000000; while [ $i -le $e ]; do echo $i; ((i=i+1)); done | wc)
1000000 1000000 6888896
real 0m18.629s
user 0m16.843s
sys 0m3.936s
$ time (i=1; e=1000000; while [ $i -le $e ]; do echo $((i++)); done | wc)
1000000 1000000 6888896
real 0m17.012s
user 0m15.319s
sys 0m3.906s
# even a noop is slow
$ time (i=1; e=1000000; while [ $((i++)) -le $e ]; do :; done | wc)
0 0 0
real 0m12.679s
user 0m11.658s
sys 0m1.004s
If you need it prefix than you might like this
for ((i=7;i<=12;i++)); do echo `printf "%2.0d\n" $i |sed "s/ /0/"`;done
that will yield
07
08
09
10
11
12
If you're on BSD / OS X you can use jot instead of seq:
for i in $(jot $END); do echo $i; done
This works fine in bash:
END=5
i=1 ; while [[ $i -le $END ]] ; do
echo $i
((i = i + 1))
done
There are many ways to do this, however the ones I prefer is given below
Using seq
Synopsis from man seq
$ seq [-w] [-f format] [-s string] [-t string] [first [incr]] last
Syntax
Full command
seq first incr last
first is starting number in the sequence [is optional, by default:1]
incr is increment [is optional, by default:1]
last is the last number in the sequence
Example:
$ seq 1 2 10
1 3 5 7 9
Only with first and last:
$ seq 1 5
1 2 3 4 5
Only with last:
$ seq 5
1 2 3 4 5
Using {first..last..incr}
Here first and last are mandatory and incr is optional
Using just first and last
$ echo {1..5}
1 2 3 4 5
Using incr
$ echo {1..10..2}
1 3 5 7 9
You can use this even for characters like below
$ echo {a..z}
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
I know this question is about bash, but - just for the record - ksh93 is smarter and implements it as expected:
$ ksh -c 'i=5; for x in {1..$i}; do echo "$x"; done'
1
2
3
4
5
$ ksh -c 'echo $KSH_VERSION'
Version JM 93u+ 2012-02-29
$ bash -c 'i=5; for x in {1..$i}; do echo "$x"; done'
{1..5}
This is another way:
end=5
for i in $(bash -c "echo {1..${end}}"); do echo $i; done
If you want to stay as close as possible to the brace-expression syntax, try out the range function from bash-tricks' range.bash.
For example, all of the following will do the exact same thing as echo {1..10}:
source range.bash
one=1
ten=10
range {$one..$ten}
range $one $ten
range {1..$ten}
range {1..10}
It tries to support the native bash syntax with as few "gotchas" as possible: not only are variables supported, but the often-undesirable behavior of invalid ranges being supplied as strings (e.g. for i in {1..a}; do echo $i; done) is prevented as well.
The other answers will work in most cases, but they all have at least one of the following drawbacks:
Many of them use subshells, which can harm performance and may not be possible on some systems.
Many of them rely on external programs. Even seq is a binary which must be installed to be used, must be loaded by bash, and must contain the program you expect, for it to work in this case. Ubiquitous or not, that's a lot more to rely on than just the Bash language itself.
Solutions that do use only native Bash functionality, like #ephemient's, will not work on alphabetic ranges, like {a..z}; brace expansion will. The question was about ranges of numbers, though, so this is a quibble.
Most of them aren't visually similar to the {1..10} brace-expanded range syntax, so programs that use both may be a tiny bit harder to read.
#bobbogo's answer uses some of the familiar syntax, but does something unexpected if the $END variable is not a valid range "bookend" for the other side of the range. If END=a, for example, an error will not occur and the verbatim value {1..a} will be echoed. This is the default behavior of Bash, as well--it is just often unexpected.
Disclaimer: I am the author of the linked code.
These are all nice but seq is supposedly deprecated and most only work with numeric ranges.
If you enclose your for loop in double quotes, the start and end variables will be dereferenced when you echo the string, and you can ship the string right back to BASH for execution. $i needs to be escaped with \'s so it is NOT evaluated before being sent to the subshell.
RANGE_START=a
RANGE_END=z
echo -e "for i in {$RANGE_START..$RANGE_END}; do echo \\${i}; done" | bash
This output can also be assigned to a variable:
VAR=`echo -e "for i in {$RANGE_START..$RANGE_END}; do echo \\${i}; done" | bash`
The only "overhead" this should generate should be the second instance of bash so it should be suitable for intensive operations.
Replace {} with (( )):
tmpstart=0;
tmpend=4;
for (( i=$tmpstart; i<=$tmpend; i++ )) ; do
echo $i ;
done
Yields:
0
1
2
3
4
If you're doing shell commands and you (like I) have a fetish for pipelining, this one is good:
seq 1 $END | xargs -I {} echo {}
if you don't wanna use 'seq' or 'eval' or jot or arithmetic expansion format eg. for ((i=1;i<=END;i++)), or other loops eg. while, and you don't wanna 'printf' and happy to 'echo' only, then this simple workaround might fit your budget:
a=1; b=5; d='for i in {'$a'..'$b'}; do echo -n "$i"; done;' echo "$d" | bash
PS: My bash doesn't have 'seq' command anyway.
Tested on Mac OSX 10.6.8, Bash 3.2.48
This works in Bash and Korn, also can go from higher to lower numbers. Probably not fastest or prettiest but works well enough. Handles negatives too.
function num_range {
# Return a range of whole numbers from beginning value to ending value.
# >>> num_range start end
# start: Whole number to start with.
# end: Whole number to end with.
typeset s e v
s=${1}
e=${2}
if (( ${e} >= ${s} )); then
v=${s}
while (( ${v} <= ${e} )); do
echo ${v}
((v=v+1))
done
elif (( ${e} < ${s} )); then
v=${s}
while (( ${v} >= ${e} )); do
echo ${v}
((v=v-1))
done
fi
}
function test_num_range {
num_range 1 3 | egrep "1|2|3" | assert_lc 3
num_range 1 3 | head -1 | assert_eq 1
num_range -1 1 | head -1 | assert_eq "-1"
num_range 3 1 | egrep "1|2|3" | assert_lc 3
num_range 3 1 | head -1 | assert_eq 3
num_range 1 -1 | tail -1 | assert_eq "-1"
}
I'm stuck in the following task: Lets pretend we have an .ini file in a folder. The file contains lines like this:
eno1=10.0.0.254/24
eno2=172.16.4.129/25
eno3=192.168.2.1/25
tun0=10.10.10.1/32
I had to choose the biggest subnet mask. So my attempt was:
declare -A data
for f in datadir/name
do
while read line
do
r=(${line//=/ })
let data[${r[0]}]=${r[1]}
done < $f
done
This is how far i got. (Yeah i know the file named name is not an .ini file but a .txt since i got problem even with creating an ini file,this teacher didn't even give a file like that for our exam.)
It splits the line until the =, but doesn't want to read the IP number because of the (first) . character.
(Invalid arithmetic operator the error message i got)
If someone could help me and explain how i can make a script for tasks like this i would be really thankful!
Both previously presented solutions operate (and do what they're designed to do); I thought I'd add something left-field as the specifications are fairly loose.
$ cat freasy
eno1=10.0.0.254/24
eno2=172.16.4.129/25
eno3=192.168.2.1/25
tun0=10.10.10.1/32
I'd argue that the biggest subnet mask is the one with the lowest numerical value (holds the most hosts).
$ sort -t/ -k2,2nr freasy| tail -n1
eno1=10.0.0.254/24
Don't use let. It's for arithmetic.
$ help let
let: let arg [arg ...]
Evaluate arithmetic expressions.
Evaluate each ARG as an arithmetic expression.
Just use straight assignment:
declare -A data
for f in datadir/name
do
while read line
do
r=(${line//=/ })
data[${r[0]}]=${r[1]}
done < $f
done
Result:
$ declare -p data
declare -A data=([tun0]="10.10.10.1/32" [eno1]="10.0.0.254/24" [eno2]="172.16.4.129/25" [eno3]="192.168.2.1/25" )
awk provides a simple solution to find the max value following the '/' that will be orders of magnitude faster than a bash script or Unix pipeline using:
awk -F"=|/" '$3 > max { max = $3 } END { print max }' file
Example Use/Output
$ awk -F"=|/" '$3 > max { max = $3 } END { print max }' file
32
Above awk separates the fields using either '=' or '/' as field separator and then keeps the max of the 3rd field $3 and outputs that value using the END {...} rule.
Bash Solution
If you did want a bash script solution, then you can isolate the wanted parts of each line using [[ .. =~ .. ]] to populate the BASH_REMATCH array and then compare ${BASH_REMATCH[3]} against a max variable. The [[ .. ]] expression with =~ considers everything on the right side an Extended Regular Expression and will isolate each grouping ((...)) as an element in the array BASH_REMATCH, e.g.
#!/bin/bash
[ -z "$1" ] && { printf "filename required\n" >&2; exit 1; }
declare -i max=0
while read -r line; do
[[ $line =~ ^(.*)=(.*)/(.*)$ ]]
((${BASH_REMATCH[3]} > max)) && max=${BASH_REMATCH[3]}
done < "$1"
printf "max: %s\n" "$max"
Using Only POSIX Parameter Expansions
Using parameter expansion with substring removal supported by POSIX shell (Bourne shell, dash, etc..), you could do:
#!/bin/sh
[ -z "$1" ] && { printf "filename required\n" >&2; exit 1; }
max=0
while read line; do
[ "${line##*/}" -gt "$max" ] && max="${line##*/}"
done < "$1"
printf "max: %s\n" "$max"
Example Use/Output
After making yourscript.sh executable with chmod +x yourscript.sh, you would do:
$ ./yourscript.sh file
max: 32
(same output for both shell script solutions)
Let me know if you have further questions.
This is my code:
#!/bin/sh
echo "ARGUMENTS COUNT : " $#
echo "ARGUMENTS LIST : " $*
dictionary=`awk '{ print $1 }'`
function()
{
for i in dictionary
do
for j in $*
do
if [ $j = $i ]
then
;
else
append
fi
done
done
}
append()
{
ls $j > dictionary1.txt
}
function
I need using unix shell functions make "dictionary". For example: I write in arguments default word, example hello. Then my function checks the file dictionary1 if that word is existing in the file. If not - append that word in file, if it's already exist - do nothing.
For some reason, my script does not work. When I start my script, it waits for something and that's it.
What I am doing wrong? How can I fix it?
An implementation that tries to care about both performance and correctness might look like:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# ^^^^- NOT sh; sh does not support [[ ]] or <(...)
addWords() {
local tempFile dictFile
tempFile=$(mktemp dictFile.XXXXXX) || return
dictFile=$1; shift
[[ -e "$dictFile" ]] || touch "$dictFile" || return
sort -um "$dictFile" <(printf '%s\n' "$#" | sort -u) >"$tempFile"
mv -- "$tempFile" "$dictFile"
}
addWords myDict beta charlie delta alpha
addWords myDict charlie zulu
cat myDict
...has a final dictionary state of:
alpha
beta
charlie
delta
zulu
...and it rereads the input file only once for each addWords call (no matter how many words are being added!), not once per word to add.
Don't name a function "function".
Don't read in and walk through the whole file - all you need is to know it the word is there or not. grep does that.
ls lists files. You want to send a word to the file, not a filename. use echo or printf.
sh isn't bash. Use bash unless there's a clear reason not to, and the only reason is because it isn't available.
Try this:
#! /bin/env bash
checkWord() {
grep -qm 1 "$1" dictionary1.txt ||
echo "$1" >> dictionary1.txt
}
for wd
do checkWord "$wd"
done
If that works, you can add more structure and error checking.
You can remove your dictionary=awk... line (as mentioned it's blocking waiting for input) and simply grep your dictionary file for each argument, something like the below :
for i in "$#"
do
if ! grep -qow "$i" dictionary1.txt
then
echo "$i" >> dictionary1.txt
fi
done
With any awk in any shell on any UNIX box:
awk -v words="$*" '
BEGIN {
while ( (getline word < "dictionary1.txt") > 0 ) {
dict[word]++
}
close("dictionary1.txt")
split(words,tmp)
for (i in tmp) {
word = tmp[i]
if ( !dict[word]++ ) {
newWords = newWords word ORS
}
}
printf "%s", newWords >> "dictionary1.txt"
exit
}'
I am searching for a command, that separates all given parameters with a specific delimiter, and outputs them quoted.
Example (delimiter is set to be a colon :):
somecommand "this is" "a" test
should output
"this is":"a":"test"
I'm aware that the shell interprets the "" quotes before passing the parameters to the command. So what the command should actually do is to print out every given parameter in quotes and separate all these with a colon.
I'm also not seeking for a bash-only solution, but for the most elegant solution.
It is very easy to just loop over an array of these elements and do that, but the problem is that I have to use this inside a gnu makefile which only allows single line shell commands and uses sh instead of bash.
So the simpler the better.
How about
somecommand () {
printf '"%s"\n' "$#" | paste -s -d :
}
Use printf to add the quotes and print every entry on a separate line, then use paste with the -s ("serial") option and a colon as the delimiter.
Can be called like this:
$ somecommand "this is" "a" test
"this is":"a":"test"
apply_delimiter () {
(( $# )) || return
local res
printf -v res '"%s":' "$#"
printf '%s\n' "${res%:}"
}
Usage example:
$ apply_delimiter hello world "how are you"
"hello":"world":"how are you"
As indicated in a number of the comments, a simple "loop-over" approach, looping over each of the strings passed as arguments is a fairly straight-forward way to approach it:
delimit_colon() {
local first=1
for i in "$#"; do
if [ "$first" -eq 1 ]; then
printf "%s" "$i"
first=0
else
printf ":%s" "$i"
fi
done
printf "\n"
}
Which when combined with a short test script could be:
#!/bin/bash
delimit_colon() {
local first=1
for i in "$#"; do
if [ "$first" -eq 1 ]; then
printf "%s" "$i"
first=0
else
printf ":%s" "$i"
fi
done
printf "\n"
}
[ -z "$1" ] && { ## validate input
printf "error: insufficient input\n"
exit 1
}
delimit_colon "$#"
exit 0
Test Input/Output
$ bash delimitargs.sh "this is" "a" test
this is:a:test
Here a solution using the z-shell:
#!/usr/bin/zsh
# this is "somecommand"
echo '"'${(j_":"_)#}'"'
If you have them in an array already, you can use this command
MYARRAY=("this is" "a" "test")
joined_string=$(IFS=:; echo "$(MYARRAY[*])")
echo $joined_string
Setting the IFS (internal field separator) will be the character separator. Using echo on the array will display the array using the newly set IFS. Putting those commands in $() will put the output of the echo into joined_string.