How to Write a Bash Script


Hello world

Welcome to my first blog post. I decided to write about bash scripting, as it is something that I am interested in, and I thought it would be a good way to get started.

What is a Bash Script?

A bash script is a text file containing a series of commands. It could be any set of commands you use frequently, typically your program launch commands or build scripts.

How do we run a bash script?

To run the script simply copy it into a directory which is on your path. Then make it executable:

chmod u+x hello-world

Then run the script:

hello-world

The Hello World Program in Bash Scripting

In this post I will introduce you to bash scripting.

What is a Bash Script?

A bash script is a file containing a set of commands that you might type on the command-line. The advantage of having these commands in a file is twofold. First, you do not need to retype the commands if you want to run them again and second, more importantly, you can use variables in the script by defining them once at the top of your script.

There are many ways to create a bash script. Here we will be using nano as our text editor but you are free to use whatever text editor you prefer. To open nano type:

$ nano filename.sh

where filename.sh is the name of your script (you can call it whatever you like). You will see something like this:

While I’ve been writing and using bash scripts, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned over the years.

I started to use Linux in 2009 as my primary OS. Before this, I was a Windows user, though I had used Mac OS X and Windows on a daily basis for two years at this point. In fact, this was because of my internship at Apple, where I’d only had access to a Mac.

Before that, I didn’t have much experience with either operating system and when switching from one to the other, it took me quite a while to get used to it. For Linux however, after about a week or so of using Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope with the default Gnome desktop environment (DE), I felt right at home. With Ubuntu being Debian-based and having used Debian’s apt-get package manager before, installing software was easy as well (and still is!).

So why did it feel right at home? Well around that time, most distros were using Gnome 2 for their DE which looked pretty similar to Windows XP/Vista/7 at the time. It was not until recently that people started switching to Unity or another DE like KDE Plasma that looks quite different from

This is the most complete and comprehensive guide to Bash Scripting. In this guide you will learn how to create a new Bash Script, how to set the permissions, how to run it and more.

Bash scripts are plain text files that have the .sh file extension. They can be written in any plain text editor such as vi, vim, pico, gedit, notepad++ or any other program that can create plain text files. The script will be executed with /bin/bash which is the default shell on all Linux distros. You can use

Getting started with bash scripting

We can start off by creating a very simple script that prints out a hello world message:

A bash script is a file containing a list of commands to be executed by the bash shell. Bash scripts are typically used for executing complex methods, and can help you automate tasks.

Why?

In this blog post we will discuss how you might create your own bash script to automate certain tasks. We will also touch on some topics which will help you get started on writing your own script for whatever purpose you see fit.

Getting Started

Before you start writing a script it is important you understand what a script is and how it works. This helps ensure that the commands you use in your script will behave as intended when executed.

1) Create an empty bash file using your favorite text editor, for this I have used vi. As the example below shows, in order to create the file called ‘testscript’ you simply type vi testscript and hit enter.

vi testscript


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