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GNU bash

Bash is one of the most common mainstream unix shells.

Tricks and Usage

The following can be seen by running: stty -a

  • ctrl-a - move cursor to the beginning of the line
  • ctrl-e - move cursor to the end of the line
  • ctrl-l - do a "clear" on the terminal window
  • ctrl-r - reverse history command search
  • ctrl-t - get status of foreground process
  • ctrl-w - delete previous word

View a list of all commands, etc..

  • compgen -b will list all the built-ins you could run.
  • compgen -a will list all the aliases you could run.
  • compgen -c will list all the commands you could run.
  • compgen -k will list all the keywords you could run.
  • compgen -A function will list all the functions you could run.
  • compgen -back will list all the above in one go.

Remove leading zeroes

This method converts the numbers from base-10 to base-10, which has the side effect of removing leading zeroes. You can also use this to convert from other base systems

for X in 00{1..20..2} ; do
  echo "$X = $(( 10#${X} ))"
done

Or use bc, a CLI calculator...

for X in {1..50..5} ; do
  Y=00${X}
  echo "${X} with zeroes is ${Y} and removed with bc is $(echo ${Y} | bc)"
done ;

printf "%s\n" {a..z} > alpha.txt
printf "%s\n" {1..26} > num.txt
pr -w 10 -t -m alpha.txt num.txt

The following output will be printed:

a    1
b    2
c    3
d    4
e    5
f    6
g    7
h    8
i    9
j    10
k    11
l    12
m    13
n    14
o    15
p    16
q    17
r    18
s    19
t    20
u    21
v    22
w    23
x    24
y    25
z    26

Convert base 36 to decimal

This converts the base 36 number z to a decimal value

echo $((36#z))

Run a command for 5 seconds, then kill it

ping -f & sleep 5 ; kill %1

Alternatively, use the timeout command if it's available. In macOS this can be installed through brew install coreutils and accessed with gtimeout.

timeout 300 cmd

Test if a variable is empty

if [[ -z "$var" ]]

Date

For date stuff, see date, because it differs by platform.

Show RANDOM statistics

for X in {0..9999} ; do
  echo $(($RANDOM % 5)) ;
done |
sort |
uniq -c

named pipes

mkfifo baz ; ps aux > baz

then, in another terminal

cat baz

alternate redirection outputs

exec 3> /tmp/baz ; ps aux >&3 # sends the output of ps aux to /tmp/baz

Redirect all output of a script into a file

This is not bash specific, but works in bash.

##!/usr/bin/env bash

exec >> /tmp/$0.log
exec 2>&1

date "+%F %T%z $0 This is stdout, and will be written to the log"
date "+%F %T%z $0 This is stderr, and will also be written to the log"

Show size of each user's home folder

getent passwd |
while IFS=: read -r user _ uid _ _ home _ ; do
  if [[ $uid -ge 500 ]] ; then
    printf "$user " ;
    sudo du -sh $home ;
  fi ;
done

Previous command's args

mkdir temp ; cd !!:*

Be aware of the location of the tokens. For example:

mkdir -p {foo,bar}/{a,b,c}
stat !!:*

This creates a problem because you can't stat -p so you must stat -p !!:2*

Debug a script

This will show everything bash is executing

bash -x scriptname.sh

Or debug with a function:

function debug {
  if [ "${debug:-0}" -gt 0 ] ; then
    echo "$@" 2>&1
  fi
}

Debug nested scripts

PS4="+(\${BASH_SOURCE}:\${LINENO}): \${FUNCNAME[0]:+\${FUNCNAME[0]}(): }" bash -x some-command

Find where all the inodes are

find ~/ -type d -print0 |
xargs -I %% -0 bash -c "echo -n %% ; ls -a '%%' | wc -l" >> ~/inodes.txt

Build and print an array

array=("one is the first element");
array+=("two is the second element" "three is the third");
echo "${array[@]}"

This is useful for building command line strings. For example, gpsbabel requires each input file to be prepended with -f. The following script takes a list of files and uses a bash array to create a command line in the form of gpsbabel -i gpx -f input_file_1.gpx -f input_file_2.gpx -o gpx -F output.gpx

##!/usr/bin/env bash

## Check for at least one argument, print usage if fail
if [ $# -lt 2 ] ; then
    echo "This script merges gpx files and requires at least two gpx files passed as arguments. Output is output.gpx";
    echo "Usage:    $0 <gpx file> <gpx file> [...<gpx file>]";
    exit 1;
fi

## Create an array of arguments to pass to gpsbabel
args=();
for item in "$@" ; do
    if [ -f "$item" ] || [ -h "$item" ] ; then
        args+=( "-f" "$item" );
    else
        echo "Skipping $item, it's not a file or symlink."
    fi
done;

## Verify we have at least two files to work with
if [ "${#args[@]}" -lt 4 ] ; then
    echo "We don't have enough actual files to work with. Exiting."
    exit 1
fi

gpsbabel -i gpx "${args[@]}" -o gpx -F output.gpx

Build and print an associative array (dict, hash)

declare -A animals=(
  ["cow"]="moo"
  ["dog"]="woof woof"
  ["cat"]="meow"
) ;
for animal in "${!animals[@]}" ; do
  echo "The $animal says '${animals[$animal]}'" ;
done ;

Show permissions in rwx and octal format

Linux:

stat -c '%A %a %n' filename

OSX:

stat -f '%A %N' filename

See stat for more stat usage.

Find the length of a variable

echo ${#SHELL}

echo "${!SH@}"

Tertiary type variables

${V:-empty} # means "return the value of the variable V or the string 'empty' if $V isn't set.

Do a command, and if it returns false, so some more stuff

until command_that_will_fail ; do something_else ; done ;

echo {1..12} may not work. If not, use echo $(seq -w 1 12)

Get filename, extension or path

Taken from http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/073

Rename files to a sequence and change their extension at the same time

ls | while read -r line ; do
  stub=${line%.*} ;
  (( i += 1 )) ;
  mv "${line}" "${i}-${stub}.txt3" ;
done ;

FullPath=/path/to/name4afile-00809.ext   # result:   #   /path/to/name4afile-00809.ext
Filename=${FullPath##*/}                             #   name4afile-00809.ext
PathPref=${FullPath%"$Filename"}                     #   /path/to/
FileStub=${Filename%.*}                              #   name4afile-00809
FileExt=${Filename#"$FileStub"}                      #   .ext

Sort a line by spaces

s=( whiskey tango foxtrot );
sorted=$(printf "%s\n"` `${s[@]}|sort);
echo $sorted

Calculate the difference between two dates

echo $(( $(gdate +%s -d 20120203) - $(gdate +%s -d 20120115) ))

substring replace a variable

This is not regex, just a simple string replacement.

## ${VAR/search/replace} does only the first
## ${VAR//search/replace} does all replacements
echo "Paths in your path: ${PATH//:/ }"

Subtract two from a MAC address

## printf -v defines a variable instead of printing to stdout
printf -v dec "%d" 0x$(echo 00:25:9c:52:1c:2a | sed 's/://g') ;
let dec=${dec}-2 ;
printf "%012X" ${dec} \
| sed -E 's/(..)(..)(..)(..)(..)(..)/\1:\2:\3:\4:\5:\6/g'
  • echo ${foo:$((${#foo}-4))}
  • echo ${foo: -4} The space is necessary to prevent it from
  • doing a completely different thing. See the next example...

Dereference a variable

$ for var in ${!BASH_V*} ; do echo "${var}: ${!var}" ; done ;
BASH_VERSINFO: 5
BASH_VERSION: 5.0.7(1)-release
  • echo ${foo:-foo isn't assigned}
  • echo ${foo:-${bar}}

This can even be recursively done...

  • echo ${foo:-${bar:-foo and bar are not assigned}}

echo {1..30..3}

echo {a..z..5}

Process all lines, but print out status about what line we are on every Nth line

Sometimes during a series of long-running jobs you want to see the status of where you are at, or at least some indicator that things have not paused. when ctrl-t is not available (and even when it is) this pattern can help you monitor that things are still moving a long.

N=0
find "/usr/bin" -type f |
while read -r X ; do
  N=$((N + 1))
  [[ "$((N % 50))" -eq 0 ]] && date "+%F %T file number $N $X" >&2
  shasum -a 512 "${X}" >> ~/usr_bin_shasums.txt
done

Example terminal output from the above command, while all shasum output goes into ~/usr_bin_shasums.txt:

$ find "/usr/bin" -type f |
> while read -r X ; do
>   N=$((N + 1))
>   [[ "$((N % 50))" -eq 0 ]] && date "+%F %T file number $N $X" >&2
>   shasum -a 512 "${X}" >> ~/usr_bin_shasums.txt
> done
2018-02-24 15:30:29 file number 50 /usr/bin/toe
2018-02-24 15:30:30 file number 100 /usr/bin/db_hotbackup
2018-02-24 15:30:32 file number 150 /usr/bin/host
2018-02-24 15:30:33 file number 200 /usr/bin/groffer
2018-02-24 15:30:35 file number 250 /usr/bin/mail
2018-02-24 15:30:36 file number 300 /usr/bin/dbicadmin
2018-02-24 15:30:38 file number 350 /usr/bin/fwkpfv
2018-02-24 15:30:39 file number 400 /usr/bin/tab2space

Make a directory structure of every combination of /adjective/noun

mkdir -p {red,green,blue}/{fish,bird,flower}

Generate a zero padded random 2 byte hex number

printf "%02X\n" $((RANDOM % 256))

grep many log files and sort output by date

sudo grep cron /var/log/* |
sed 's/:/ /' |
while read file month day hour line ; do
  date -d "$month $day $hour" "+%F %T%z ${file} ${line}" ;
done |
sort

Get command line switches

From the docs

  • If a character is followed by a colon, the option is expected to have an argument.
  • If the first character of optstring is a colon, silent error reporting is used.
while getopts p:l:t: opt; do
  case $opt in
    p) pages=$OPTARG ;;
    l) length=$OPTARG ;;
    t) time=$OPTARG ;;
  esac
done

shift $((OPTIND - 1))
echo "pages is ${pages}"
echo "length is ${length}"
echo "time is ${time}"
echo "\$1 is $1"
echo "\$2 is $2"

Call this script as ./foo.sh -p "this is p" -l llll -t this\ is\ t foo bar

Files

These files can change the behavior of bash.

.bash_profile

~/.bash_profile is executed every time you log into the system or initiate a login shell. Inclusion of things that write to stdout is allowed here.

If you want to write scripts that change your interactive shell environment, such as changing your CWD, define functions here instead of using stand-alone scripts.

Example .bash_profile

The ~/.bash_profile file can be quite long and complicated. The following example is an incomplete sample:

export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim
export GZIP='-9'
export HISTSIZE=5000
export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T%z '
export PS1="\u@\h:\w$ "
export TERM=xterm-256color
export TMOUT="1800"  # log out after this many seconds of shell inactivity

alias ll='ls -la'
alias temp='date_F=$(date +%F) ; mkdir -p ~/temp/$date_F 2>/dev/null ; cd ~/temp/$date_F'

sprunge() { curl -F 'sprunge=<-' http://sprunge.us < "${1:-/dev/stdin}"; } # usage: sprunge FILE # or some_command | sprunge

## Don't record some commands
export HISTIGNORE="&:[ ]*:exit:ls:bg:fg:history:clear"

## Avoid duplicate entries
HISTCONTROL="erasedups:ignoreboth"

## Perform file completion in a case insensitive fashion
bind "set completion-ignore-case on"

.bashrc

~/.bashrc is executed every time you open a sub-shell. It should not output any text, otherwise certain things (eg: scp) will fail.

~/.inputrc

This file defines some bash behaviors. It also affects some other tools.

## Ignore case while completing
set completion-ignore-case on