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One can continue commands over more than one line with a "\" immediately followed by a
newline sign which is made be the return key:
grep filename | sort -u | awk '{print $4}' | \
uniq -c >> /longpath/file
Variables
Filling in
When filling into a variable then one uses just it's name: state="US" and no blanks. There is
no difference between strings and numbers: price=50.
Using
When using a variable one needs to put a $ sign in front of it: print $state $price.
Arrays
Set and use an array like:
arrname[1]=4
To fill in
print ${arraname[1]}
To print out
${arrname[*]}
${#arrname[*]}
Declaration
There are happily no declarations of variables needed in ksh. One cannot have decimals only
integers.
Branching
if then fi
if [[ $value -eq 7 ]];then
print "$value is 7"
fi
or:
if [[ $value -eq 7 ]]
then
print "$value is 7"
fi
or:
if [[ $value -eq 7 ]];then print "$value is 7";fi
if then else fi
if [[ $name = "John" ]];then
print "Your welcome, ${name}."
else
print "Good bye, ${name}!"
fi
case esac
case $var in
john|fred) print $invitation;;
martin)
print $declination;;
*)
print "Wrong name...";;
esac
Looping
while do done
while [[ $count -gt 0 ]];do
print "\$count is $count"
(( count -= 1 ))
done
until do done
until [[ $answer = "yes" ]];do
print -n "Please enter \"yes\": "
read answer
print ""
done
continue...break
One can skip the rest of a loop and directly go to the next iteration with: "continue".
while read line
do
if [[ $line = *.gz ]];then
continue
else
print $line
fi
done
The single Arguments are stored in $1, ....$n and all are in $* as one string. The arguments
cannot
directly be modified but one can reset the hole commandline for another part of the program.
If we need a first argument $first for the rest of the program we do:
if [[ $1 != $first ]];then
set $first $*
fi
One can iterate over the command line arguments with the help of the shift command. Shift
indirectly removes the first argument.
until [[ $# -qe 0 ]];do
# commands ....
shift
done
One can also iterate with the for loop, the default with for is $*:
for arg;do
print $arg
done
Comparisons
To compare strings one uses "=" for equal and "!=" for not equal.
To compare numbers one uses "-eq" for equal "-ne" for not equal as well as "-gt" for greater
than
and "-lt" for less than.
With "&&" for "AND" and "||" for "OR" one can combine statements:
if [[ $price -lt 1000 || $name = "Hanna" ]];then
# commands....
fi
if [[ $name = "Fred" && $city = "Denver" ]];then
# commands....
fi
Variable Manipulations
Removing something from a variable
Variables that contain a path can very easily be stripped of it: ${name##*/} gives you just the
filename.
Or if one wants the path: ${name%/*}. % takes it away from the left and # from the right.
%% and ## take the longest possibility while % and # just take the shortest one.
Functions
Description
A function (= procedure) must be defined before it is called, because ksh is interpreted at run
time.
It knows all the variables from the calling shell except the commandline arguments. But has
it's
own command line arguments so that one can call it with different values from different
places in
the script. It has an exit status but cannot return a value like a c funcition can.
Making a Function
One can make one in either of the following two ways:
function foo {
# commands...
}
foo(){
# commands...
}
Return
The return statement exits the function imediately with the specified return value as an exit
status.
Data Redirection
General
Data redirection is done with the follwoing signs: "> >> < <<". Every program has at least a
standardinput, standardoutput and standarderroroutput. All of these can be redirected.
Pipes
For a serial processing of data from one command to the next do:
command1 | command2 | command3 ...
e.g. last | awk '{print $1}' | sort -u.
Coprocesses
One can have one background process with which one can comunicate with read -p and print
-p. It is started with command |&. If one uses: ksh |& then this shell in the background will do
everything for us even telnet and so on: print -p "telnet hostname".
Special Variables
$# Number of arguments on commandline.
$? Exit status of last command.
$$ Process id of current program.
$! Process id of last backgroundjob or background function.
$0 Program name including the path if started from another directory.
$1..n Commandline arguments, each at a time.
$* All commandline arguments in one string.
Trivial Calculations
Simpe calculations are done with either a "let" in front of it or within (( ... )). One can
increment a variable within the (( )) without a "$": (( a+=1 )) or let a+=1.
"grep"
Search for the occurence of a pattern in a file: grep 'pattern' file. If one just wants to know
how often soemthing occurs in a file, then: grep -c 'pattern file. This can be used in a script
like:
if [[ $(grep -c 'pattern' file) != 0 ]];then ......;fi. The condition is fullfilled if the pattern was
found.
"sed"
Sed means stream line editor. It searches like grep, but is then able to replace the found
pattern. If you want to change all occurences of "poor" with "rich", do: sed -e 's/poor/rich/g'
filename. Or what is often seen in software packages, that have to be compiled after getting a
propper configuration, is a whole file stuffed with replacements patterns like:
/@foo@/s;;king;g. This file with inumerable lines like that has to be given to sed with: sed -f
sedscript filename. It then precesses each line from file with all the sed commands in the
sedscript. (Of course sed can do much more:-))
"awk"
Awk can find and process a found line with several tools: It can branch, loop, read from files
and also print out to files or to the screen, and it can do arithmetics.
For example: We have a file with lines like: Fred 300 45 70 but hundreds of them. But some
lines have a "#" as the first sign of them and we have to omit these ones for both, processing
and output. And we want to have lines as output like: 415 Fred where 415 is the sum of 300,
45 and 70. Then we call on awk:
awk '$1 !~ /^#/ && $0 ~ /[^ ]/ {print $2+$3+$4,"\t",$1}' filename.
This ignores lines with a "#" at the beginning of the first field and also blank lines. It then
prints the desired sum and the $1 ist only printed after a tab. This is the most trivial use of
awk only.
Check my AWK programming introduction bye clicking on this sentence!
"perl"
Perl is a much richer programming language then ksh, but still one can do perl commands
from within a ksh script. This might touch Randal, but it's true. Let's say you want to remove
all ^M from a file, then take perl for one line in your ksh script:
perl -i -ep 's/\015//g' filename.
Perl can do an infinite amount of things in many different ways. For anything bigger use perl
instead of a shell script.
Check my PERL programming introduction bye clicking on this sentence!
Email: kistler@gmx.net