I've got a script that I am passing arguments/options/parameters to at the command line. One of the values has a space in it, which I have put in double quotes. It might be easier to provide an example. Forgive my usage of arguments/options/parameters. $: ./test1.ksh -n -b -d "Home Videos" My problem is setting a variable to "Home Videos" and it being used together. In my example, the -d is to specify a directory. Not all the directories have spaces, but some do in my case. This is an example of the code I have that is not working as expected: #!/bin/ksh Function1() { echo "Number of Args in Function1: $#" echo "Function1 Args: $@" SetArgs $* } SetArgs() { echo -e "\nNumber of Args in SetArgs: $#" echo "SetArgs Args: $@" while [ $# -gt 0 ] do case $1 in -[dD]) shift export DirectoryName=$1 ;; -[nN]) export Var1=No shift ;; -[bB]) export Var2=Backup shift ;; *) shift ;; esac done Function2 } Function2() { echo "Directory Name: ${DirectoryName}" } Function1 $* When I run this, I'm getting only Home for the DirectoryName instead of Home Videos. Seen below. $ ./test1.ksh -n -b -d "Home Videos" Number of Args in Function1: 5 Function1 Args: -n -b -d Home Videos Number of Args in SetArgs: 5 SetArgs Args: -n -b -d Home Videos Var1 is set to: No Var2 is set to: Backup Directory Name: Home What I am expecting and I have not been able to get it to happen is: $ ./test1.ksh -n -b -d "Home Videos" Number of Args in Function1: 4 Function1 Args: -n -b -d "Home Videos" Number of Args in SetArgs: 4 SetArgs Args: -n -b -d "Home Videos" Var1 is set to: No Var2 is set to: Backup Directory Name: Home Videos <-- Without double quotes in the final usage. I've tried escaping the double quotes, without any success.

I want to check whether an argument to a shell script is a whole number (i.e., a non-negative integer: 0, 1, 2, 3, …, 17, …, 42, …, etc, but not 3.1416 or −5) expressed in decimal (so nothing like 0x11 or 0x2A).  How can I write a case statement using regex as condition (to match numbers)? I tried a few different ways I came up with (e.g., [0-9]+ or ^[0-9][0-9]*$); none of them works. Like in the following example, valid numbers are falling through the numeric regex that's intended to catch them and are matching the * wildcard. i=1 let arg_n=$#+1 while (( $i < $arg_n )); do case ${!i} in [0-9]+) n=${!i} ;; *) echo 'Invalid argument!' ;; esac let i=$i+1 done Output:

$ ./cmd.sh 64
Invalid argument!

I want something like this:

time="1m"
case "$time" in
    *h*) 
    *m*) 
    *s*) 
        echo "handling several cases for h, m, s tokens" ;;
    *)
        echo "handling other cases" ;;
esac

How to achieve this for POSIX shell?

I am trying to put a case statement inside another case statement, but I want the user to be able to return to the first case statement if they want. The idea is something like this:

-bash
read choice
case $choice in
    1)
       read pattern
       case $pattern in
               pattern1)
                      Statement()
                      ;;
               pattern2)
                      Statement(return to the first case)
                      ;;

               *)
                      echo "Error"
                      ;;
       esac
       ;;

    2)
       echo "test"
       ;;

    3)
       break
       ;;

    *)
       echo "error"
       ;;
esac

I have the following code.

-shell
read -p "Enter a word: " word

case $word in
  [aeiou]* | [AEIOU]*)
          echo "The word begins with a vowel." ;;
  [0-9]*)
          echo "The word begins with a digit." ;;
  *[0-9])
          echo "The word ends with a digit." ;;
  [aeiou]* && [AEIOU]* && *[0-9])
          echo "The word begins with vowel and ends with a digit." ;;
   ????)
          echo "You entered a four letter word." ;;
   *)
          echo "I don't know what you've entered," ;;
esac

When I run this:

Enter a word: apple123
case2.sh: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token `&&'
case2.sh: line 10: `  [aeiou]* && [AEIOU]* && *[0-9])'

It looks like case statement doesn't support AND operator, and also I believe the && operator in my above case statement logically incorrect. I understand that we can use if...else to check if the input starts with a vowel and digit. But I am curious if case has any builtin function like AND operator.

I am looking for a way to have fallthrough happen based on an if condition within a case condition in bash. For example: input="foo" VAR="1" case $input in foo) if [ $VAR = "1" ]; then # perform fallthrough else # do not perform fallthrough fi ;; *) echo "fallthrough worked!" ;; esac In the above code, if the variable VAR is 1, I would like to have the case condition perform fallthrough.

case "$1","$name" in
    -py | --python | --python3,*) if [[ "$name" =~ \..+$ ]]; then

That doesn't catch stuff, which actually it should, like…

USERNAME@HOSTNAME:~$ myscript --python surfer

Funny thing: Simplify the multi pattern conditional to…

--python,*) if [[ "$name" =~ \..+$ ]]; then

and it works! With the bitterly-repetitive outlook to have to place that section 3 times: 1st for

-py

, then for

--python

, and finally for

--python3

for catching all patterns. But the other thing is - the other way around:

case "$1" in
    -py | --python | --python3)    if [[ ! "$name" =~ \.py$ ]]; then

That's fine, that works! So, that disproves my assumption, that the multi pattern syntax might be incorrect, might needs the spaces to be removed, or any kind of bracket around the sum of all 3 patterns to be interpreted as a group, where the first OR the second OR the third pattern is supposed to be catched. And with all this I really have the impression, that you can't have both in GNU bash, version 4.3, multi pattern AND aside of that conditional a second conditional like "$name". Could that be? Or have I made a mistake in trying to acchieve that?

I was given homework where I need to test if $1 is a file, special file or a folder in a **Case $1 In statement**. I tried some things but wasn't able to make it work. Do you have any idea on how to implement this (in a case statement) What I need to achieve is : if [ -f $1 ] then exit 1 elif [ -d $1 ] then exit 2 elif [ -c $1 -o -b $1 ] then exit 3 else exit 0 fi I'm not asking for the final code, just a way to make the following work: Case $1 in -d) ...

I have a for loop and case statements. The for loop has quite a bit element list and the case statement will assign an 1D array or a vector. These values will be used in for loop after. I have the following code. What happens is that the for loop does the job only for the first value in the vector. For example, if the f=C, the case is "C") isotope=(6012 6013);; for n in $isotope: It loops only for 6012 not for 6013. Same issue with f=Ce, it only does the loop for 58136 not for the rest. # loop through elements for f in C Ce do cd ${f} case $f in "Al") isotope=(13027) ;; "C") isotope=(6012 6013);; "Ce") isotope=(58136 58138 58140 58142);; esac for n in $isotope do ....# loop through elements for f in C Ce do cd ${f} case $f in "Al") isotope=(13027) ;; "C") isotope=(6012 6013);; "Ce") isotope=(58136 58138 58140 58142);; esac for n in $isotope do .... Thank you for the help Birsen

I am attempting to write a bash script that takes input from the keyboard and displays text depending on what number was entered:

#!/bin/bash
read -p "Enter your age: " AGE
case $AGE in
        [1-12]*)
                echo "You are just a child." ;;
        [13-19]*)
                echo "You are just a teenager." ;;
        [20-29]*)
                echo "You are a young adult." ;;
        [30-39]*)
                echo "You are a moderate age adult." ;;
               *)
                echo "You are really old."
esac

When you enter numbers like 3 or 4, it doesn't fall in the first range. It falls withing the 30-39 and the default. Where am I messing up?

I just realized that in shell scripting esac, the closing statement for case is just case reversed. This may be a stupid question but does esac actually mean something (ie an abbreviation) or was it chosen solely due to it being the literal opposite of case?

I have two arrays and want to print a value from ARRAY2 depending on the applicable value in ARRAY1.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

ARRAY1=(bb.service.sql bw.service.sql)
ARRAY2=(bb bw)

case $ARRAY1[@] in

  ${ARRAY1})
    echo ${ARRAY2} ;;

  *)
    echo "unknown" ;;
esac

I m getting unknown here though. What am I doing wrong?

case "$1" in all) echo "$1" ;; [a-z][a-z][a-z][a-z][a-z][a-z]) echo "$1" ;; *) printf 'Invalid: %s\n' "$3" exit 1 ;; esac With this the only input accepted is all, and 6 characters. It won't accept 4 characters or more than 6. What I want to do here is to only allow characters, not digits or symbols, but of unlimited length. What is the correct syntax? Thanks

Is it possible to check if a variable is contained inside an array using case? I would like to do something like ARR=( opt1 opt2 opt3 ); case $1 in $ARR) echo "Option is contained in the array"; *) echo "Option is not contained in the array"; esac

I'm making a script for Docker environments, and I'm a bit stuck with a pigeonhole I've gotten myself into. #!/bin/bash set -euo pipefail # Variables gituser="modem7" gitrepo="docker-devenv" gitfolder="Environments" buildername="DockerDevBuilder" # Colours RED="\e[31m" GREEN="\e[32m" END="\e[0m" echo "=========================================" printf " Checking Dependencies\n" echo "=========================================" printf "Checking if dependencies are installed...\n" pkg_list=(docker jq) tc() { set ${*,,} ; echo ${*^} ; } for pkg in "${pkg_list[@]}" do titlecase=$(tc $pkg) isinstalled=$(dpkg-query -l $pkg > /dev/null 2>&1) if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then printf "~ $titlecase is...${GREEN}installed${END}\n" else printf "~ $titlecase is...${RED}not installed${END}\n" printf "Exiting Script. Install $pkg.\n" echo "=========================================" exit fi done echo "=========================================" cat /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "" echo "Builder $buildername created" else echo "Builder already created, using $buildername" docker buildx use "DockerDevBuilder" echo "" fi echo "Creating $dev_name Environment..." docker buildx build --rm=true --build-arg BUILDKIT_INLINE_CACHE=1 --load -t $lowerdev:dev https://github.com/$gituser/$gitrepo.git#:$gitfolder/$dev_name \ && clear \ && echo "=========================================" \ && echo "Activating $dev_name Dev Environment..." \ && echo "Press CTRL + D or type exit to leave the container" \ && docker run --rm -it --name "$dev_name"Dev"$RANDOM" --hostname "$dev_name"Dev"$RANDOM" "$lowerdev:dev" break ;; "Prune") echo "Clearing Docker cache..." docker system prune -af echo "" echo "Removing Docker buildx builder..." if docker buildx rm "$buildername" > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "" echo "Builder $buildername removed" else echo "Builder already removed, no action performed" echo "" fi exec bash $0 ;; "Quit") echo "Exiting script" exit ;; *) echo "invalid option $REPLY" ;; esac" done exit 0 I'm currently using "eval "case \"$dev_name\" in" but that seems problematic from what I've read. It works, but I'm not sure if there is a better way to achieve what the results. The choices are created from the folder names in the repo , but I'm not quite sure how to get out of using eval. Am I worrying about something pointless?

I have made a simple backup program for my bin folder. It works. Code and resultant STDOUT below. Using rsync to copy from local ~/bin folder to a /media/username/code/bin folder. The code works fine when only one result from mount | grep media but I can not quite fathom how to advance it to letting me select from multiple results from the mount/grep. I suspect the for LINE below is lucky to work at all as I believe for is delimited by spaces, in shell scripting, but as there are no spaces in the results it then delimited on the \n ? I tried find /media and of course got a *lot* of results. Not the way to go I think. O_O check_media () { FOUNDMEDIA=$(mount | awk -F' ' '/media/{print $3}') echo -e "foundmedia \n$FOUNDMEDIA" echo For Loop for LINE in $FOUNDMEDIA do echo $LINE done CHOSENMEDIA="${FOUNDMEDIA}/code/bin/" echo -e "\nchosenmedia \n$CHOSENMEDIA\n" exit }

bin is /home/dee/bin/
foundmedia 
/media/dee/D-5TB-ONE
/media/dee/DZ61

For Loop
/media/dee/D-5TB-ONE
/media/dee/DZ61

chosenmedia 
/media/dee/D-5TB-ONE
/media/dee/DZ61/code/bin/

You can see how I add the save path /code/bin to the found media but with multiple results I get a chosenmedia which cannot work. I would like to be able to choose the media to which I want to rsync my backup to, or restore from.

I encountered such a problem when passing a parameter to a script, the function corresponding to the case menu is not executed. The script accepts parameters as input and performs the appropriate actions

#!/bin/bash

usage () {
echo " Usage:
-h, --help         #Displaying help
-p, --proc         #Working with directory /proc
-c, --cpu          #Working with CPU
-m, --memory       #Working with memory
-d, --disks        #Working with disks
-n, --network      #Working with networks
-la, --loadaverage #Displaying the load average on the system
-k, --kill         #Sending signals to processes
-o, --output       #Saving the results of script to disk"

exit2
}

proc () {
if [ -n "$1" ]
then
      if [ -z "$2" ]
      then
             ls /proc
      else
           cat /proc/"$2"
       fi
fi
}

parsed_arguments=$(getopt -o hp:c:m:d:n:la:k:o: --long help,proc:,cpu:,memory:,disks:,network:,loadaverage:,kill:,output:)
if [[ "${#}" -eq "" ]]
then
       usage
fi
eval set -- "$parsed_arguments"
while :
do
      case "$1" in
      -h | --help) echo " Showing usage!"; usage
       ;;
       -p | --proc) proc
       ;;
     esac
done

f the script does not receive any parameters, then a description of the options should be displayed, but if the script receives the first parameter starting with "-" or "--" as input, then the functions corresponding to the letter or word following the "-" or "--" should be executed. Example

No parameters:
./script.sh
 Usage:
-h, --help         #Displaying help
-p, --proc         #Working with directory /proc
-c, --cpu          #Working with CPU
-m, --memory       #Working with memory
-d, --disks        #Working with disks
-n, --network      #Working with networks
-la, --loadaverage #Displaying the load average on the system
-k, --kill         #Sending signals to processes
-o, --output       #Saving the results of script to disk"

With one parameters:
./script.sh -p
or
./script.sh --proc
The contents of the /proc directory should be displayed

With additional parameters:
 ]]./script.sh -p cpuinfo
or
./script.sh --proc cpuinfo
The contents of the file passed through the additional parameter should be displayed

A script without arguments is executed, but not with arguments. Can you tell me what could be the reason for the fact that when passing arguments to the script, the corresponding functions are not executed.

I wish to search for a string mongo and not starting with comment i.e # in a file. homedir=ls -d ~ echo "$homedir" if [[ cat $homedir/2_need_softwares.txt | grep -v '^#' | grep -iq mongo ]]; then echo "Installing mongodb" else echo "skipping mongo" fi Output: /root skipping mongo I'm on centos 9 $ uname -a Linux DKERP 5.14.0-134.el9.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jul 21 12:57:06 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux As you see the if statement is failing and hence the else gets executed. But when I run the if condition manually it shows success $ cat /root/2_need_softwares.txt | grep -v '^#' | grep -iq mongo $ echo $? 0 $ grep mongo /root/2_need_softwares.txt mongo Can you please suggest what is wrong with my if condition? I tried the below as well: 1. if [[ $(cat $homedir/2_need_softwares.txt | grep -v '^#' | grep -iq mongo) ]]; then 2. if [[ $("cat $homedir/2_need_softwares.txt | grep -v '^#' | grep -iq mongo") ]]; then This is for bash and POSIX is preferred.

I am writing a script which must accept a word from a limited predefined list as an argument. I also would like it to have completion. I'm storing list in a variable to avoid duplication between complete and case. So I've written this, completion does work, but case statement doesn't. Why? One can't just make case statement parameters out of variables?

declare -ar choices=('foo' 'bar' 'baz')
function do_work {
  case "$1" in 
    "${choices[*]}")
      echo 'yes!'
      ;;
    *)
      echo 'no!'
  esac
}
complete -W "${choices[*]}" do_work

I am trying to use a variable consisting of different strings separated with a | as a case statement test. For example: string="\"foo\"|\"bar\"" read choice case $choice in $string) echo "You chose $choice";; *) echo "Bad choice!";; esac I want to be able to type foo or bar and execute the first part of the case statement. However, both foo and bar take me to the second: $ foo.sh foo Bad choice! $ foo.sh bar Bad choice! Using "$string" instead of $string makes no difference. Neither does using string="foo|bar". I know I can do it this way: case $choice in "foo"|"bar") echo "You chose $choice";; *) echo "Bad choice!";; esac I can think of various workarounds but I would like to know if it's possible to use a variable as a case condition in bash. Is it possible and, if so, how?