Bash Programming Cheat Sheet printable pdf download

Bash Programming Cheat Sheet

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Updated: 02/03/2008 00:46:31

Bash Programming Cheat Sheet

Written By:

ph34r

A quick cheat sheet for programmers who want to do shell scripting. This is not intended to teach programming, etc.

but it is intended for a someone who knows one programming language to begin learning about bash scripting.

Basics

All bash scripts must tell the o/s what to use as the interpreter. The first line of any script should be:

#!/bin/bash

You must make bash scripts executable.

chmod +x filename

Variables

Create a variable - just assign value. Variables are non-datatyped (a variable can hold strings, numbers, etc. with out

being defined as such).

varname=value

Access a variable by putting $ on the front of the name

echo $varname

Values passed in from the command line as arguments are accessed as $# where #= the index of the variable in the

array of values being passed in. This array is base 1 not base 0.

command var1 var2 var3 .... varX

$1 contains whatever var1 was, $2 contains whatever var2 was, etc.

Built in variables:

$1-$N Stores the arguments (variables) that were passed to the shell program from the command line.

Stores the exit value of the last command that was executed.

Stores the first word of the entered command (the name of the shell program).

Stores all the arguments that were entered on the command line ($1 $2 ...).

"$@" Stores all the arguments that were entered on the command line, individually quoted ("$1" "$2" ...).

Quote Marks

Regular double quotes ("like these") make the shell ignore whitespace and count it all as one argument being passed or

string to use. Special characters inside are still noticed/obeyed.

Single quotes 'like this' make the interpreting shell ignore all special characters in whatever string is being passed.

The back single quote marks (`command`) perform a different function. They are used when you want to use the results

of a command in another command. For example, if you wanted to set the value of the variable contents equal to the list

of files in the current directory, you would type the following command: contents=`ls`, the results of the ls program are

put in the variable contents.

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Bash Programming Cheat Sheet