BASH from scratch: learn enough bash

to write your own scripts

The basics
Creating an executable file
In order to write a script and execute it, the script file must have execution permission. So let's
create a file and give it execution permission
cd into a test directory and run
# create a new file called `script.sh`
touch script.sh
# add `execution` permission to the script to make it executable
chmod +x script.sh

to run the script, while in the same directory:

./script

the ./ is necessary to tell your terminal to look in the current directory and not the
default script directory.

now open that file in your favorite editor and let's get to learning the syntax.

The shebang!
TL;DR; add #!/usr/bin/env bash in the first line of your script file to mark that file as a
bash executable.
you could use #!/usr/bin/env sh for portability, but we are working specifically
with bash here.

printing stuff
to print things to the terminal, you can use echo or printf

echo is straightforward, it "echos" what you throw at it:

for example lets make that script.sh, from above, print "hello world"
#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo hello world

run it: ./script.sh and it will print: hello world.

printf is used for printing and "formatting" strings, hence the f at the end. a few simple
examples can be found here
The largest use-case for me is printing a new line using the new line specifier \n.

example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
printf "hello\nworld\n"

prints:
hello
world

Comments
Any line starting with # is a comment.

Declaring Variables
simple:
MY_VARIABLE="my value"

IMPORTANT: no space before or after =. Shell uses space as a delimiter for command
arguments.

Parameter Expansion
see this and this to learn more.

referencing or substituting a variable:

for example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

FAV_FRUIT="apples"
echo FAV_FRUIT

# prints `FAV_FRUIT`

while:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

FAV_FRUIT="apples"
echo $FAV_FRUIT

# prints `apples`

did you catch the difference? yes! FAV_FRUIT vs $FAV_FRUIT.

you can also use $ in a string:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

FAV_FRUIT="apples"
I_LIKE_BLANK="I like $FAV_FRUIT"
echo $I_LIKE_BLANK

# prints `I like apples`

Note: in all examples above, you can replace $ with ${variable name} for the
same effect. so $FAV_FRUIT is the same as ${FAV_FRUIT}

Second note: notice how we used $FAV_FRUIT inside of a string? that's string
templating for ya!

Using a default value

if a variable is empty or undefined, use a certain default value. This is best illustrated with an
example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

SHIRT_COLOR=""
COLOR="${SHIRT_COLOR:-red}"
echo $color

# prints: `red` since SHIRT_COLOR is empty

another example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

DEFAULT_COLOR="red"
SHIRT_COLOR=""
MY_SHIRT_COLOR="My shirt color is ${SHIRT_COLOR:-$DEFAULT_COLOR}"
echo $MY_SHIRT_COLOR

# prints: `My shirt color is red`

Note: notice how we used ${SHIRT_COLOR:-$DEFAULT_COLOR} inside of a

string? that's string templating for ya!

Passing variables to our script from terminal

To pass a variable, you can declare it before running the script.
This is especially helpful for passing environment variables. For example: the following script
expects a FRUIT and will print I Like <FRUIT>. If FRUIT is undefined, use Apricot.
#!/usr/bin/env bash

DEFAULT_FRUIT="Apricot"
FRUIT=${FRUIT:-$DEFAULT_FRUIT}
echo "I Like $FRUIT"

now you declare FRUIT="Oranges" before running ./script:

FRUIT="Oranges" ./script

which prints: I Like Oranges

since the default is Apricot:
./script

prints: I Like Apricot

The More Advanced stuff

If Statements
The syntax

If then
if [[ <some test> ]]; then
<commands>
fi

If else
if [[ <some test> ]]; then
<commands>
else
<other commands>
fi

If elseif else
if [[ <some test> ]]; then
<commands>
elif [[ <some test> ]]; then
<different commands>
else
<other commands>
fi

Tests
in the above <some test> can be replaced with a test condition. You can see all available test
conditions by typing man test in your terminal

Here are a few sample conditions that evaluate to true:

Test Description
[[2 -gt 1]] 2 is greater than 1. counterpart -lt: less,than.
[[2 -eq 2]] 2 equals 2
[[3 -ge 3]] 3 is greater than,or equal to 3. counterpart -le: less than or equal
[[-n "hello"]] Length of "hello" is greater than 0
[[-z ""]] Length of "" is 0
[["apple"= String,"apple" equals String "apple". (-eq compares numbers while =
"apple"]] compares charachters)
[["apple"!=
"apple1"]] String,"apple" does no equal String "apple1"
Examples using wildcards:
- [[ "watermelon" = *"melon"* ]]: String "watermelon" contains "melon"
 Since this article is about bash and not shell in general, we use bash's double square
brackets [[]]. Read this and this answer for more information.

this article is a good resource for further test conditions

To continue with the spirit of examples and fruits, here is an example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

if [[ ${#FRUIT} -gt 4 ]] # FRUIT character count is greater than 4

then
echo "[$FRUIT]: yay! your fruit has more than 4 characters!"
elif [[ ${#FRUIT} -lt 4 ]] # FRUIT character count is less than 4
then
echo "[$FRUIT]: Unbelievable... your fruit has less than 4 characters..."
else # FRUIT character count must be 4
echo "A fruit with exactly 4 characters, how precious!"
fi

The following table shows the commands and the outputs for above script:

Command Output
FRUIT="Apple" [Apple]: yay! your fruit has more than 4
./script.sh characters!
FRUIT="Fig" [Fig]: Unbelievable... your fruit has less
./script.sh than 4 characters...
FRUIT="Pear" A fruit with exactly 4 characters, how
./script.sh precious!
Note the parameter expansion ${#FRUIT} gets the characters length of FRUIT

Here are a few helpful operators

Parsing Arguments (while and case statements)

This is probably going to be the best part. Now that you've learned a few cool tricks, let's look at
passing arguments with some sort of API.
Our goal in this section will be to create a script that will print information about a user. For
example, the following command:
./script --name Ahmed --height 6ft --occupation "Professional Procrastinator" --
username coolestGuyEver23

which will print:

Hello, my name is Ahmed. I'm 6ft tall.
I work as a Professional Procrastinator and my username is coolestGuyEver23

Note that order of arguments should not matter

let's get to it!

first, we need a way to parse the arguments --name Ahmed --height 6ft --
occupation= Developer --username coolestGuyEver23 to variables. see this SO
answer
first let's look at bash's built in $# and shift
$# returns the number of arguments passed. for example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo $#

If you run ./script arg1 arg2 arg3, the output would be 3

shift
The shift command is one of the Bourne shell built-ins that comes with Bash. This
command takes one argument, a number. The positional parameters are shifted to the
left by this number, N. The positional parameters from N+1 to $# are renamed to
variable names from $1 to $# - N+1.

This is better explained with an example:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo $#
shift 2
echo $#
shift
echo $#
echo $@

running ./script arg1 arg2 arg3 arg4 arg5 (total 5 arguments) prints:
5
3
2
arg4 arg5

huh? so shift 2 basically removed arg1 and arg2 then we executed shift again and
removed arg3. Note that $@ is another builtin that prints the arguments.

Now is a good time to tell you how to access arguments sort-of like an array. You can use $1 for
first arg, $2 for second arg, $3 for third arg.. and so on.

example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo $1
echo $3
echo $2

running:
./script arg1 arg2 arg3

prints:
arg1
arg3
arg2
how do we use all that info? take a look at this:
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
key="$1"
echo $key
shift
done

It might have clicked by now! Using the while loop above, with exit condition [[ $# -gt
0 ]] and shift to reduce $# we can loop over all passed args!

let's make it better with a case statement, let's start simple and parse name and height only
#!/usr/bin/env bash

while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]
do
key="$1"
case $key in
# parse name arg
-n|--name)
NAME="$2" # the value is right after the key
shift # past argument (`--name`)
shift # past value
;;
# parse height arg
-h|--height)
HEIGHT="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
# unknown option
*)
echo "Unknown argument: $key"
shift # past argument
;;
esac
done

echo "NAME: $NAME"

echo "HEIGHT: $HEIGHT"

Notes:

1. each case is separated with a pipe | for example -n|--name) matches -n OR

--name
2. we used shift two times to move past the argument flag and the argument
value
3. More on case statement
4. We are exiting after finding the first match by using ;;. Matching unknown
options is at the bottom.

Rut it:
./run.sh --name Ahmed --height 6ft

or shorter
./run.sh -n Ahmed -h 6ft
prints:
NAME: Ahmed
HEIGHT: 6ft

putting it all together:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]
do
key="$1"
case $key in
# parse name arg
-n|--name)
NAME="$2" # the value is right after the key
shift # past argument (`--name`)
shift # past value
;;
# parse height arg
-h|--height)
HEIGHT="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
# parse user arg
-u|--user)
USER="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
# parse occupation argument
-o|--occupation)
OCCUPATION="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
# parse code quality argument
-u|--username)
USERNAME="$2"
shift # past argument
shift # past value
;;
# unknown option
*)
echo "Unknown argument: $key"
shift # past argument
;;
esac
done

echo "Hello, my name is $NAME. I'm $HEIGHT tall.

I work as a $OCCUPATION and my username is $USERNAME"

and run it:

./run.sh --name ahmed --height 6ft --occupation "professional procrastinator" --
username coolestGuyEver23

or
./run.sh -n ahmed -h 6ft -o "professional procrastinator" -u coolestGuyEver23
result:
Hello, my name is ahmed. I'm 6ft tall.
I work as a professional procrastinator and my username is coolestGuyEver23

Note, remember Using a default value section above? you can use that to add default
values in case a param was not passed.

Evaluating Commands
you can assemble a a command as a string then use eval to execute it. For example, remember that
long maven command from the beginning of the post?
mvn clean install -PautoInstallPackage -Dcrx.user=user1 -Dcrx.password=pass1

We can break that up and assemble it:

Assuming I already parsed PROFILE, USER and PASSWORD

PROFILE="${PROFILE:-autoInstallPackage}"
USER="${USER:-user1}"
PASSWORD="${PASSWORD:-pass1}"

COMMAND="mvn clean install -P$PROFILE -Dcrx.user=$USER -Dcrx.password=$PASSWORD"

eval $COMMAND

and the command will be executed.

eval might not be the best choice for all cases. It is completely fine in this case since I
am the only one running the script and not the end users. So exercise caution when
using eval, in any programming language.

The script above can be re-written without eval as:

PROFILE="${PROFILE:-autoInstallPackage}"
USER="${USER:-user1}"
PASSWORD="${PASSWORD:-pass1}"
mvn clean install "-P$PROFILE" "-Dcrx.user=$USER" "-Dcrx.password=$PASSWORD"

Thanks @lietux

Functions
Functions are simple and straightforward. Here is a function that prints the first argument passed to
it:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

printFirstOnly(){
echo $1
}
# execute it
printFirstOnly hello world

prints hello only

Function arguments are accessed with the $N variable where N is the argument number.
I like to use functions to pretty print things:
pretty() {
printf "***\n$1\n***\n"
}

pretty "hi there"

prints:
***
hi there
***

You can use it for whatever purpose, however.

Conclusion
If you've reached this, then I've done something right :) I'd love to hear your feedback on the post in
general. Was it organized? scattered? did it make sense? was it helpful? and what can I do to
improve it?

DISCUSS (19)
Ahmed Musallam
Developer, Father and Husband. Currently working in the Adobe Experience Manager space.

@ahmedmusallam AhmedAtWork ahmed-musallam ahmedmusallam.com

Janne "Lietu" Enberg
#!/usr/bin/env sh
You might want to consider replacing sh with bash if you want to actually do BASH scripting.
They are different interpreters, and one can lead to vastly different set of available features
depending on platform you run it on, while the other will (correctly) crash if the missing features
(namely BASH) is missing on the system.
REPLY
Ahmed Musallam
 Author
I started this post to talk about shell scripting in general. but I think I think you’re right, its
confusing that way. I’ll change the shebang to be bash exclusive. Thank you for the feedback!
REPLY
Janne "Lietu" Enberg
Both are definitely valid options, just if you want to write for bash then it's better to avoid
ambiguity about it. When writing with support for BSD, Busybox, etc. environments in mind (e.g.
inside Alpine Linux), sh is the better option, just comes with some extra baggage.

REPLY
 Brad Robertson

Excellent article, and very helpful comment discussions as well! The concise descriptions with
supporting examples makes it a quick and effective read.
Anyway, wish I had read an article like this 9 months ago-- the information about shift, loops and
functions would have gone a long way in the scripts I've been writing to provision our Ubuntu
Vagrant VMs for use as localhost web dev environments.
Looking forward to applying some of this. Thx for posting!
REPLY
 Janne "Lietu" Enberg

Just as a quick comment - you should check out actual provisioning tools, such as SaltStack and
Ansible if you want reproducible environments (or event driven infrastructure actions, secret
management, easily distributable remote command execution, etc. etc.)
REPLY
Ahmed Musallam
 Author
Glad you liked it! Honestly, I wrote it after struggling with bash for a few weeks. I was copying and
pasting things I did not understand exactly how they worked.. mainly that while-shift loop.

REPLY
Janne "Lietu" Enberg
Instead of referring to some online articles on test conditions, you can just check out man test.

Conditions and most other such things are good to shorthand a bit, and if you're planning on using
BASH use [[ ... ]] instead of [ ... ] as they also function differently. Stick to one style
for predictability. serverfault.com/a/52050
Slightly compacted formats
if [[ "$FOO" == "1" ]]; then
...
else
...
fi

for i in 1 2 3 4; do
echo $i
done

while [[ true ]]; do

...
done

Also shellcheck.net/ is an excellent resource to use to check your scripts for common bugs etc.
There's even a decent unit testing framework for BASH scripts nowadays: github.com/sstephenson/
bats
REPLY
Ahmed Musallam
 Author
This is fantastic! I’m still new to bash scripting :) but will include this in the article. Great
feedback!!
REPLY
 Ahmed Musallam

I have updated the post, thank you again for the feedback!

REPLY
 Janne "Lietu" Enberg

Oh, another thing I just noticed. Generally people like to think "eval is evil", and while imo eval
has it's place, especially in BASH, you can avoid using eval with various tricks.
JAVA=$(which java)
APP=$1
EXTRA=""
if [[ "$NEED_EXTRA" == "1" ]]; then
EXTRA="--extra arg"
fi

"$JAVA" "$APP" $EXTRA