Lecture 4 & 5: Shell Programming

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grep: Searching for a
Pattern
grep options pattern filename(s)

Ex:
grep “sales” emp.lst

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Options Significance
-i Ignores case for matching
-v Doesn’t display lines matching expression
-n Displays line nos along with lines
-c Displays count of no of occurences
-l Displays list of filenames only
-e Specifies expression with this option. Can
be used multiple times.
-f Takes pattern from file, one per line.
-E Treats pattern as Extented Regular
Expression (ERE)
-x Matches pattern with entire line.
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Wild-Cards

Wild-Cards Matches
* Any number of characters including
none
? A single character
[ijk] A single character – either i, j, or k.
[x-z] A single character within the ASCII
range of x and z
[!ijk] A single character that is not an i, j, or
k
[!x-z] A single character that is not within
the ASCII range of x and z

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Symbols or Matches
Expression
* Zero or More occurrences of the previous character
g* Nothing or g, gg, ggg etc
. A Single character
.* Nothing or any number of Characters
[pqr] A single character p, q or r
[c1-c2] A character within ASCII range represented by c1 &
c2
[1-3] A digit between 1-3
[^pqr] A single character which is not p, q or r
[^a-zA-Z] Non-alphabetic character
^pat Pattern pat at beginning of line
pat$ Pattern pat at end of line
^bash$ Bash as the only word in the line
^$ Lines containing nothing
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Shell Programming

A Shell Program runs in Interpretive Mode. It is

not compiled to a separate executable file as a C
program is. Each statement is loaded into
memory when it is to be executed.

When a group of command have to be

executed regularly the should be stored in a file,
and the file itself is executed as a shell script or
a shell program.

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Example
# Sample Shell Script
echo “Today’s Date: date”
echo “My Shell: $SHELL”

# - Comment Character:
The Shell ignores all characters placed on its right.

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Contd…
Shell scripts are executed in a separate child
shell process. This is done by providing special
interpreter line at the beginning (starting with
#!).
To run the script we make it executable and
then invoke the script name.
$ chmod +x script.sh or $ chmod 755 script.sh
$ script.sh

User can explicitly spawn a child shell of his

choice with the script name as argument. In
this case it is not mandatory to include the
interpreter line.

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read: Making Scripts
Interactive
The read statement is the shell’s internal
tool for taking inputs from the user, i.e.,
making scripts interactive.
It is used with one or more variable.
When we use a statement like
read name
the script pauses at that point to take i/p
from the keyboard. Since this is the form
of assignment, no $ is used before name.
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Example

echo –e “Enter the pattern to be searched: \c”

read pname
echo –e “Enter the file to be used: \c”
read flname
echo “Searching for $pname from file
$flname”
grep “$pname” $flname
echo “Selected records shown above”

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Using Command-Line
Arguments
The shell script accepts arguments from the command
line. The first argument is read by shell into parameter
$1, second into $2, and so on.
Special Parameter used by Shell:
$* - It stores complete set of positional parameters as
a single string.
$# - It is set to number of arguments specified.
Used to check whether right number of argument
have been entered.
$0 - Holds the command name itself.
“$@” - Each Quoted string treated as a separate
argument.
$? - Exit Status of Last Command.

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Example

echo “Program: $0” The number of

arguments specified is $# The arguments
are $*”
grep “$1” $2
echo –e “\n Job Over”

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exit and EXIT STATUS OF
COMMAND

exit - Command to terminate a program.

This command is generally run with numeric
arguments.
exit0 - When everything went fine
exit1 - When something went wrong
exit2 - Failure in opening a file.

Example:
$ grep “director” emp.lst >/home/vishal; echo$?

“All command return an exit Status”

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Logical Operators && and || - Conditional
Execution

Cmd1 && Cmd2: The Cmd2 will

execute only when Cmd1 is succeeds.
Cmd1 || Cmd2: The Cmd2 will execute
only when Cmd1 is fails.
Example:
$ grep “director” emp.lst >/home/vishal && echo
“Pattern found in file”
$ grep “manager” emp.lst >/home/vishal || echo
“Pattern not found in file”

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THE if CONDITIONAL

if command is if command is if command is

successful successful successful
then then then
execute command execute command execute command
else fi elif command is
execute command successful
fi then ….
else …..
fi

Form 1 Form 2 Form 3

if command is successful ; then

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Using test and [] to evaluate
expressions

When we use if to evaluate expressions, we

require the test statement because the true or
false values returned by expressions cant be
directly handled by if.
test use certain operator to evaluate the
condition on its right and returns either true or
false exit status, which is then used by if for
making decisions.
test works in 3 ways:
o Compare two numbers
o Compare two strings or a single string for a null
value
o Check a file attribute
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Numeric Comparison
The numeric comparison operators always begin
with a – (hyphen), followed by two character word,
and enclosed either side by a whitespace.
Example:
$ x=5; y=7; z=7.2
$test $x –eq $y; echo $?
1
$test $z –eq $y; echo $?
0
Numeric comparison is restricted to integers
only.
Operators: -eq, -ne, -gt, -ge, -lt, -le.
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Example

#!/bin/sh
if test $# –ne 2; then
echo “You did not enter 2 arguments”
else
grep “$1” $2 || echo “$1 not found in $2”
fi

Shorthand for test

test $x –eq $y is same as [ $x –eq $y ]

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String Comparison

Another set of operator is used for

string comparison.
String tests used by test
Test True if
S1 = S2 String S1 is equal to String S2
S1 != S2 String S1 is not equal to String
S2
-n stg String stg is not a null String
-z stg String stg is a null String
stg String stg is assigned and not a
null String

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Example
#!/bin/sh
if [ $# –eq 0 ] ; then
echo “Enter the string to be searched: \c” ; read pname
if [ -z “$pname” ] ; then
echo “You have not entered the string” ; exit 1
fi
echo “Enter the file to be used: \c” ; read flname
if [ ! -n “$flname” ] ; then
echo “You have not entered the filename” ; exit 2
fi
demo.sh “$pname” “$flname”
else
demo.sh $* Create demo.sh containing
grep $1 $2
fi
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Contd…
test also permits the checking of more
than one condition in the same line using
the –a (AND) and –o(OR) operators.
Example:
if [ -n “$pname” –a -n “$flname” ] ; then
demo.sh “$pname” “$flname”
else
echo “ At least one input was null string ” ; exit 1
fi

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File Tests
test can be used to test various file attributes like
its type or permissions.
Example:
#!/bin/sh
if [ ! -e $1 ] ; then
echo “ File does not exists ”
elif [ ! -r $1 ] ; then
echo “ File is not readable ”
elif [ ! -w $1 ] ; then
echo “ File is not writable ”
else
echo “ File is both readable and writable ”
fi

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Contd…

File – Related Tests with test

Test true if
-f file file exists and is a regular file
-r file file exists and is a readable
-w file file exists and is a writable
-x file file exists and is a executable
-d file file exists and is a directory
-s file file exists and has a size greater
than zero

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THE case CONDITIONAL
case statement matches an expression or
string for more than one alternative, in
more efficient manner than if.
Form:
case expr in
pattern 1) cmd1 ;;
pattern 2) cmd2 ;;
pattern 3) cmd3 ;;
esac

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Example
#!/bin/sh
echo” MENU\n
1.List of files\n2. Processes of user\n3. Today’s Date\n4.
Users of System\n5. Quit to UNIX\n Enter your option: \c”
read choice
case “$choice” in
1) ls –l ;;
2) ps –f ;;
3) date ;;
4) who ;;
5) exit ;;
*) echo “ Invalid Option”
esac
The last option (*) matches any option not matched by the previous
options.
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Contd…
It is very effective when string is fetched by command
substitution.
Example:
case ‘date | cut –d “ ” –f1’ in
Mon) Command1;;
Tue) Command2 ;;
Wed) Command3 ;;
*) ;;
esac
Matching Multiple Patterns:
echo “ do you wish to continue? (y/n) \c “
read answer
case “$answer” in
y|Y) ;;
n|N) exit;;
esac
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Contd…
Matching the DOT
The * does not match all file beginning with the a . (dot) or the /
of a pathname.
Example: $ ls .???*

The Character Class

The character class comprises of set of characters enclosed of
rectangular brackets [ and ], but it matches a single character in
a class.
Example:
case “$answer” in
[yY][eE]*) ;;
[nN][oO]) exit;;
*) echo “ Invalid Response”
esac

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expr : Computation and String
Handling

The shell relies on external expr

command for computing features.
Functions of expr:
oPerform arithmetic operations on
integers
oManipulate strings
Computation
expr can perform four basic arithmetic
operation as well as modulus function

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Examples

$x=3; y=5
$expr 3 + 5
$expr $x - $y
$expr 3 \* 5
$expr 3 / 5
$expr $y % $x
Command substitution:
z =`expr $x + $y`
Incrementing value of a variable
x =`expr $x + 1`

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String Handling

expr can perform 3 important string

functions

oDetermine the length of the string.

oExtract a sub-string.
oLocate the position of a character in a
string

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Contd…
Length of the string
$ expr “abcdefgh” : ‘.*’
The regular expression “.* “ signifies to expr that it has to
print the number of characters matching the pattern

Extracting a sub-string
Expr can extract a string enclosed by escaped character \
( and \)
$ stg = 2003
$ expr “$stg” : ‘..\(..\)’

Locating the position of a character

$ stg = abcdefgh
$ expr “$stg” : ‘[^d]*d’

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while loop
Format:
while cmd is successful
do
cmd1
cmd2
done

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Assignments
1. Use a script to take two numbers as
arguments and output their sum using
i) bc ii) expr.
Include error checking to test if two
arguments were entered.
2. Write a shell script that uses find to
look for a file and echo a suitable msg
if the file is not found. You must not
store the find output in a file.

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