Intro to Bash Scripting

Class Description
The class: a six week course on Tues evenings covering basic and intermediate scripting in the bash shell. Each night, we will create a few scripts of about 15 lines of code, modify the code, run it, and talk about the results. We will also get to know the "Advanced Bash Scripting Guide" [1] and the Gnu "Bash Reference Manual" [2] and learn to research and solve our own programming problems. User projects are encouraged -- bring your problems and we will solve them together!

I am a fifth year Ph D student from Berkeley in Demography, writing an anthropology of a small lumber town in Oregon. I have worked as a programmer in Linux for almost 10 years, and I am currently employed part time as a software project manager at Portland State.

The first class: Feb 17, 5:00 to 6:30, 2009.

Some helpful links:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html

http://www.intuitive.com/wicked/wicked-cool-shell-script-library.shtml

Class Outline
Day Zero: Introductions and adminitrivia. Command line refresher. How to find your way round the filesystem at a terminal. How to use the text editor nano. How to use version control with subversion. Collaborating with multiple people on version control.

Day One: What is a "script" and what is a "variable". We will write a simple script in nano, with comments, a "shebang" line, appropriate permissions, and simple output. We work on the idea of a variable, using shell expansion to assign output to variables, interpolating variables, and exporting environment variables. We will also examine the output and input streams ("stdin", "stdout", "stderr"). We will "comment-out" code. Finally we will talk about style, including indentation, variable names, trickiness, and comment-first scripting.

Day Two: "For-loops", "word splitting", and printf. We will explore the for-loop in all its glory, going over lists stored in variables. This will require a discussion of how Bash automatically splits strings into words and how we can control this through quoting syntax. We will also make interesting formatting commands with the printf command.

Day Three: Conditionals ("if/ then" statements). We will show how to write "if" and "case" statements, and incorporate pattern matching and "file tests" into our scripts.

Day Four: File input, "while-read", and useful scripting. We will investigate how to get an input line from a file, parse it into useable pieces, and do interesting things with that data (like write a simple email "spambot").

Day Five: SQL databases and the command line. We will use SQLite to store email addresses, query the table, and use the results to send spam to our friends.

Class Approach
Each class period I will have posted code on the wiki. We will go over it together, showing you how to look up questions using online documentation.

You will "checkout" the class code repository. Inisde this repository, you will type examples from this wiki page, with modifications to make your own scripts, run them from the command line, and fix bugs. At the end of the class, you will "commit" your new scripts for looking at later.

Every day instructions
Each class we will go through the same drill with checking out the code tree, working in it, and committing our changes. This allows us to save our work and collaborate.

Each new class period should be done within a new directory, and each new script is a different file within that directory.

Note that this class will only cover the tip of the iceberg for Bash scripting; to learn more -- follow the bash links above, type in the code you find while you read the explanations, and experiment. Be brave. You don't have enough permissions to break anything important.

Note also that this class is a work in progress, and I might jump into the wiki to make a change to the notes or the code for next time. Feel free to suggest changes or ask questions, especially if you buy me dinner after class.

Sometimes my instructions will be too terse -- ask questions, but try to learn what I am talking about and translate it into commands at the prompt without me specifying exactly what those commands are all the time.

Each script should be commented at the top with (1) your email address, (2) a sentence about what the script does, and (3) another sentence about HOW it does it in high-level terms.

Finally, give Charlie a big hand! He will be the TA for the class, walking around and helping, having successfully completed the first iteration of the soon to be famous FG Bash Scripting Class. All alumni are eligible to TA next time and earn valuable volunteer hours.

The command line, editing, etc.
Here we will practice working on the command line and editing files and such...

First note: DON'T EVER USE SPACES IN FILENAMES!!!! It just makes trouble you may not know how to get out of (yet). Just use alpha characters, underscores, and dots -- nothing else for now!

Second note: WHEN LOST IN THE FILE SYSTEM, RUN `pwd` AND `ls -l`. It is a good habit anytime you change to a directory to run those two commands, read the output, and visualize where you are and what is happening.

Make a directory (`mkdir foo`), change current working directory to it (`cd foo`), list all the files in it (`ls`), print the current working directory (`pwd`), touch a file (`touch myfile.txt`), list the files again, delete the file created with touch (`rm myfile.txt`), change directories one level up (`cd ..`), delete the directory you started by making (`rmdir foo`).

Do it all again except use different names.

Make a directory and cd to it. Start editing a file (`nano myfile.txt`). Figure out how to save the file in nano. Exit nano. List files in your directory. Edit the file again with nano. Repeat until you understand what is going on.

Start a new directory, mess around like above, then look at permissions with the verbose option to ls, `ls -l`. Change permissions so you can't view the file (`chmod 0000 myfile.txt`), list the directory verbosely again, and try to edit the file. Change the permissions again to 0700. Edit it again. Then clean out the directory and get back to home.

Repeat until understood. Talk with your neighbors

Subversion and google code
Take a deep breath

Open a new browser window:

http://code.google.com/p/freegeekbash/

Sign in with your Gmail name (referred to as GOOGLENAME below) and its password (look in the top right corner for "Sign In").

Click the "source" tab. Under the heading Command Line Access you see a line that ends with the link  "googlecode.com password". Click on this link, and you are taken to a new web page that displays an ugly 12 character PROJECTPASSWD. Write down this password and save it for future use. Then browser back to the source tab page. Just above the line with the link that you just clicked is a line that reads

"svn checkout https://freegeekbash.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ freegeekbash --username GOOGLENAME". Open a terminal window, put this whole line (not the too similar line with "http://..." ) into the command line and hit Enter. You will be given a blank prompt for a password. Enter your PROJECTPASSWD. Wait a bit, read the output and notice you have a new directory freegeekbash with files and subdirectories. List the files, best with the -a or -al option. cd to freegeekbash, ls -al. cd to semester2.

Make a directory named GOOGLENAME (remember--your Gmail name), cd to GOOGLENAME, make a directory named class0, cd to class0, and finally create and edit a file here.

ONE STUDENT AT A TIME: cd up two levels (`cd ..; cd ..`); run `pwd` to make sure it is "~/freegeekbash/semester2". Run `svn add GOOGLENAME` to add your new directory, READ THE OUTPUT. Run `svn commit -m 'started a new dir for the bash class'`; this "commits" your changes along with a comment (after the "-m" switch) about them.

ONE STUDENT AT A TIME: cd to ~/freegeekbash, run `svn update`, read the output. Then explore the new files (running `ls -al` and `pwd`) and directories underneath the directory "semester2".

Questions.

Rinse repeat until we can all deal with editing new and old files, making directories, committing, and updating.

MAKE SURE AT END: everybody run `svn commit -m "final commit at end of first day"` in ~/freegeekbash/

First day -- scripts and variables
What is a shell script anyway? It is ...

... a file of text ...

... full of unix commands, variables, and control structures ...

... that usually executes from top to bottom ...

... using variables to hold data ...

... and loops and conditionals to do fancy programming stuff...

... with a way to read input and write output ...

... that probably has some "side-effects".

Why learn shell? Old-school Unix style? Class?

Script 1
Following just prints my name. Run it as is, but then change it to print your name.


 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) script 1 wsprague@nospam.org 2008-10-29
 * 3) Script just prints my name
 * 1) Script just prints my name

FIRSTNAME='Webb' LASTNAME='S.' echo "Hello, $FIRSTNAME $LASTNAME"

Edit it by running the following: nano class1-script1.sh, then save it (ctrl-O in nano), then chmod 0700 class1-script1.sh, and run as ./class1-script1.sh

in the other terminal window.

Script 2
This script takes a parameter from the command line and uses it as the name: "variable expansion". Note the expansion, but also how different quotes or lack thereof have different effects.


 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) script 2 wsprague@nospam.org 2008-10-29
 * 3) Prints names from command line
 * 1) Prints names from command line

NAME=$1 echo "Hello, $NAME." echo 'Hello, $NAME.' echo Hello, $NAME. echo Hello, "$NAME". echo Hello, \"$NAME\". echo "Hello, ${NAME}with text." echo "Hello, $NAMEwith text."

try from the command line:

./class1-script2.sh ./class1-script2.sh Foobar ./class1-script2.sh "Foobar Smith" ./class1-script2.sh Foobar Smith

Script 3
This script does some basic math, and then outputs it using variable expansion. Check out the quoting. Also note what happens when we try to do math on weird input.


 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) Script adds two numbers from command line
 * 1) Script adds two numbers from command line

LEFT=$1 RIGHT=$2 RES=$(( $LEFT + $RIGHT )) echo $(( $LEFT + $RIGHT )) echo '$(( $LEFT + $RIGHT ))' echo "$(( $LEFT + $RIGHT ))" echo "$LEFT + $RIGHT = $RES." echo '$LEFT + $RIGHT = $RES.' # Why does this do what it does?

try from the command line:

./class1-script3.sh 100 10 ./class1-script3.sh 'one hundred' 'ten' ./class1-script3.sh 34

Script 4
This script does some "shell expansion" using the unix command "date", which gives a formatted string of the date; use "date --help" to see more).


 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) Script 4.  Script calculates the year if we give it years from now.
 * 1) Script 4.  Script calculates the year if we give it years from now.

YEAR=$( date +'%Y' ) YEARS_FORWARD=$1 echo "Start at year $YEAR, finish at year $(($YEAR + $YEARS_FORWARD))"

Try from the command line

./class1-script4.sh ./class1-script4.sh 10 ./class1-script4.sh "ten"

Script 5

 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) Script 5 takes a filename, strips any spaces from it, and moves the original file
 * 3)    to the new name.
 * 1)    to the new name.

RES=$( echo $1 | sed 's/ /_/g' ) echo "After stripping of spaces, \"$1\" looks like \"$RES\"" # Why do we escape the quotes here? echo mv "$1" "$RES" # try this same script without "echo" here, after touching a file with a name that you put into the parameters of the script

Try from the command line:

touch "a file with spaces in the name" ./class1-script5.sh "a quoted filename with spaces" ./class1-script5.sh an unquoted filename with spaces ././class1-script5.sh a_filename_wo_spaces

Discussion
Coding style -- variable names, comments, indentation, trickiness.

Comment first design.

"Commenting out" code.

Second day -- for-loops
What is a for-loop? It is a bash construct that repeatedly grabs one item from a sequence of data separated by whitespace, does something with that piece of the sequence, until there is no more data.

Here is the paradigm:

for VARIABLE in SEQUENCE; do # bunch of statements in here that are done repeatedly # referencing $VARIABLE # more statements done

Finger exercises
Edit a few files with nano, find them with ls, and delete them with rm

Run the command `seq 1 10` from the command line

Run the command `printf "hello %s, my name is %s, I am %i years old" Tarzan Jane 32`

Run the command `factor 144` from the command line

Script 0

 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) script 0 wsprague@nospam.org 2008-10-29
 * 3) Basic for loop with seq and printf
 * 1) Basic for loop with seq and printf

START=$1 FINISH=$2 FULL_SEQ=$( seq $START $FINISH ) COUNT=0

printf "Start = %i, finish = %i\n" $START  $FINISH for X in $FULL_SEQ; do   echo "touching file.$X" touch "file.$X" COUNT=$(( $COUNT+1 )) done printf "finished working on %i files\n" $COUNT

Save this as class2.script0.sh, then chmod 0700 class2.script0.sh. Run as follows:

./class2.script0.sh 1 10 ./class2.script0.sh 4 14

Examine your directory to see the new files and their names. Those are from this script.

Script 1

 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) script 1 wsprague@nospam.org 2008-10-29
 * 3) Do some fancy formatting with printf,
 * 4)    by calculating the first 10 "orders of magnitude", and printing them
 * 1)    by calculating the first 10 "orders of magnitude", and printing them

MAX=7 SEQ=$( seq 0 $MAX) echo $SEQ for I in $SEQ; do   OUT=$(( 10 ** $I )) printf "The %3i order of magnitude = %i.\n" $I $OUT done

Run this as

./class2.script2.sh

Modify it to make "MAX" store the number from $1.

Script 2
The following factors a number and creates a bunch of files.


 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) script 2 wsprague@nospam.org 2008-10-29
 * 3) Takes a name and a number as parameters,
 * 4)    factors the number, touches all files "$name.$number".
 * 1)    factors the number, touches all files "$name.$number".

NAME=foobar # use $1 NUMBER=12  factor $NUMBER | sed 's/^[0-9]*://g' ) printf "Factors working on: %s\n" "$FACTORS" echo

TEST=1 COUNT=0 for SUFFIX in $FACTORS; do   TEST=$(($TEST * $SUFFIX)) COUNT=$(($COUNT + 1)) touch "$NAME.$SUFFIX" printf "Touched: prefix = %s, suffix = %i\n" $NAME $SUFFIX done printf "\nFinished working on %i files\n" $COUNT

Run this script as

./class2.script2.sh

Then modify it to set "NAME" and "NUMBER" from the command line.


 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) script 3 wsprague@nospam.org 2008-10-29
 * 3) Generate times tables by using a nested loop.
 * 1) Generate times tables by using a nested loop.

START=$1 FINISH=$2 INCREMENT=1 # try changing this SEQ=$(seq $START $FINISH )

printf "     " for x in $SEQ; do   printf "%4i " $x done
 * 1) Print top row

printf "\n    " for x in $SEQ; do   printf "_____" done
 * 1) Print top row separator

echo

for x in $SEQ; do   printf "\n%4i| " $x for y in $SEQ; do       printf "%4i " $(( $x * $y )) done; done; printf "\n"
 * 1) Fill in each row with left label and cell result

Run this as

./class2-script3.sh 1 12

Discussion
Debugging loops with echo statements

Precalculating things like sequences

Code style -- when to add whitespace between sections and stanzas

Third day -- conditionals
http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Conditional-Constructs

Script 1 -- determine relative order of two numbers, and check input validity

 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) script 1 wsprague@nospam.org 2008-10-29
 * 3) Categorize numbers based on input.
 * 4)    Also check input (finally!).
 * 1)    Also check input (finally!).

USAGE='./script1.sh num1 num2' ERROR="Error. Usage: $USAGE"

if $1 ; then                 # $1 is "true" if something is in there LEFT=$1 shift else echo $ERROR exit 1 fi

if $1 ; then RIGHT=$1 shift else echo $ERROR exit 1 fi

if $LEFT < $RIGHT ; then echo "$LEFT is strictly lesser than $RIGHT _lexicographically_" elif $LEFT > $RIGHT ; then echo "$LEFT is strictly greater than $RIGHT _lexicographically_" else echo "$LEFT is exactly the same as $RIGHT _lexicographically_" fi

Do the chmod 0700 etc dance. Try this as

./script1 aardvark zebra ./script1 1 9 ./script1 10 9 ./script1 foo

Script 2 -- filter prime numbers
Prints out prime numbers, uses a lot of crazy conditional operations.


 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2)  script2.sh
 * 3)  displays prime numbers less than input parameter.=
 * 4)  tests for input validity
 * 5)  breaks out of loop once go over max
 * 6)  does lots of stuff!

function myfactor { OUT=$(factor $1 | sed 's/^[0-9]*: //') echo "$OUT" }
 * 1) write a function that tweaks factor command

USAGE="script2.sh num" if grep '^[0-9][0-9]*; then             ## Note boolean operator) ; then             ## Note boolean operator MAX=$1; shift else echo $USAGE exit 1;                    ## "1" signifies error. Run a script and then try "echo $?" fi
 * 1) Verify input

if -e $MAX ; then echo "Already ran script for number $MAX. rm file to do repeat." 1>&2   exit 1 else touch $MAX fi
 * 1) Verify script has not already been than run for given number

MAXMAX=100 for X in $(seq $MAX); do    # Test whether have more factors than input number FACTORS=$( myfactor $X ) if $X == $FACTORS  ; then echo $X else echo "foobar" > /dev/null                      # do nothing fi
 * 1) Get prime numbers, but not above MAXMAX

# test whether above MAXMAX, "break" out of loop if so. if $X -gt $MAXMAX  ; then echo "won't let $X go above $MAXMAX. Breaking out of loop" break fi

done

echo bye
 * 1) do something to highlight how the break statement works

Run this as

./script2.sh ./script2.sh 80 ./script2.sh 800 ./script2.sh blahblahlbah

Script 3 -- using case

 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) Script that does some silliness  case statements
 * 1) Script that does some silliness  case statements

USAGE="./$0 input" if $1 ; then ARG=$1; shift else echo "$USAGE" exit fi

case $ARG in    foo | bar | baz) echo "speaking unix baby-talk";;    mama | dada) echo "speaking real baby-talk";; ## note multiline block [0-9]*) echo "numbers"       touch $ARG.file        ;;    mama ) echo ma-ma;;         ## we won't ever do this *) echo other stuff;; esac

Run this as

./script3.sh ./script3.sh 12 ./script3.sh mama ./script3.sh dada ./script3.sh "this is a long line"

Discussion
...

Fourth day -- while-read and functions
We are going to read a file with email addresses (and other information like "valid") and send spam to all of them.

The main things to look out for here are (1) writing a "function", (2) "sourcing" one bash script inside another script, and (3) reading and processing line-by-line input to do something useful.

Script 1 -- simple function
The function syntax creates a "mini" command that can be accessed wherever it is sourced.


 * 1) !/bin/bash


 * 1) creates a function (just like a new unix command), that sends
 * 2) semi-customized spam to the recipient

function spam { if $1 ; then local RECIP=$1 shift else echo "spam: missing recipient parameter" 1>&2 return 1 fi

local TODAY=$(date +%A)

printf "First para: Buy me!\n\nSecond para: type your password!\n" \ | mail -s "$TODAY's winning lotto ticket" $RECIP

printf "Finished: %s\n" $RECIP 1>&2

if -e "$RECIP" ; then echo "removing $RECIP" 1>&2 rm "$RECIP" fi

return 0 }

Try this from the command line

$ source script1.sh $ spam SOME_EMAIL_ADDRESS

Script 2 -- simple while-read

 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 2) use "while-read" to parse a text file

printf "COLUMN-1   REMAINING\n"
 * 1) print column headings


 * 1) print four characters of first column, and then the first little bit of
 * 2) everything else.

while read V1 VPLUS ; do       printf '"%4.4s..." "%.5s..."\n' $V1 "$VPLUS" done

Try this (note the funky "<<END" syntax -- I will explain...)

$ cat | ./script2.sh <<END column1 some more date column2 a whole lot more data column3

END

Script 3 -- source a function, while-read a file, and send data from file to the function
Now we are going to send the contents of a file through a script that sends spam to each email address on each new line


 * 1) !/bin/bash


 * 1) processes a file, sends spam to each valid email address (verified with grep
 * 2) and an "if" statement)

source script1.sh
 * 1) By "sourcing" the function in this file, we can use all its code without
 * 2) looking at it

SUCCESS_COUNTER=0 FAILURE_COUNTER=0 FULL_EMAIL_PATTERN='^[a-z0-9.][a-z0-9.]*@[a-z0-9][a-z0-9]*\.[a-z0-9][a-z0-9]$*' USER_EMAIL_PATTERN='^[a-z0-9.][a-z0-9.]*'
 * 1) set up some variables

while read V1 VPLUS ; do       if echo $V1 | grep $FULL_EMAIL_PATTERN ; then spam $V1 echo "spammed (internet): $V1" 1>&2 SUCCESS_COUNTER=$(( $SUCCESS_COUNTER + 1)) elif echo $V1 | grep $USER_EMAIL_PATTERN; then spam $V1 echo "spammed (local): $V1" 1>&2 SUCCESS_COUNTER=$(( $SUCCESS_COUNTER + 1)) else echo "unreadable email: $V1" 1>&2 FAILURE_COUNTER=$(( $FAILURE_COUNTER + 1)) fi done
 * 1) process the file from "standard input"

echo "Successfully spammed $SUCCESS_COUNTER emails!" 1>&2 exit 0
 * 1) summarize what we did and exit

Try this (use your own email where it says "USEREMAIL"):

cat | ./script3.sh <<END USEREMAIL wsprague@pdx.edu wsprague a_bogus3email END

Fifth Day -- Discussion and accumulated questions
This is a good time to have an open discussion about Unix and Bash programming, as well as give tips for further reading and hacking. To get us started, here are some bullet points:

More learning!

 * Questions?


 * Manuals


 * Look at important FG scripts


 * Own projects (mine: a stuff tracker with barter extensions)

Class meta discussion

 * Feedback about the class (also tell Laurel)


 * Other classes (text editing!)


 * Teaching assistants

Important ideas in software

 * Commenting code


 * Other languages


 * Software design


 * Version control systems


 * Crazy Unix programming (APUE)


 * Processes


 * Interprocess communication


 * File descriptors and input/ output


 * The character of Unix and programming:


 * DIY versus "shrinkwrapped"


 * Tools for later piping versus applications

Community

 * How to help FG and practice programming with new skills


 * "Advanced Bash Programming with SQL" -- the next class