i Systems and Internet

i Infrastructure Security
Institute for Networking and Security Research
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

Shell Programming
(Part 1: Syntax and Scripting)

Devin J. Pohly
<djpohly@cse.psu.edu>

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 1

 Shell programming
● aka “shell scripting,”
“Bash scripting”
● What is it?
● Series of commands
● Programming with
programs
● What for?
● Automating
● System administration
● Prototyping
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 A sample script: shello
● First line: interpreter #! /bin/bash
● The #! is important! # Greetings!
● Comment: # to EOL echo Shello world
● Make it executable # Use a variable
echo Shello "$USER"
● chmod +x shello
● Not by file extension # Set a variable
greetz=Shellutations
● Typical: .sh or none echo "$greetz world"
● Run it
● ./shello

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 3

 Shell variables
● Setting/unsetting
● var=value
● No spaces!
● unset var
● Using the value
● $var
● Untyped by default
● Behave like strings
● (See declare builtin)

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 4

 Special variables
● Getting info
● $USER
● $HOME
– (aside: ~ is similar)
● $PWD
● Changing behavior
● $PATH
– Colon-separated
● $PS1
● And more...
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 Exercise
● Make a directory ~/bin
● Move shello script
there
● Prepend the directory
to your $PATH
● PATH=~/bin:$PATH
● Change to home dir
● Run by typing shello

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 6

 Shell initialization
● Set custom variables
● ~/.bashrc
● Just a script
● Runs at shell startup
● Anything you want

● (Note: set and export

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.)

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 Fun with prompts
● Main prompt: $PS1
● Special values
● \u: username
● \h: hostname
● \w: working dir
● \e: escape (for colors)
● many others
● Can set in .bashrc

Very detailed treatment: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 8
 Special characters
● echo Penn State is #1
● echo Micro$oft Windows
● echo Steins;Gate
● What happened?

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 9

 Special characters
● echo Penn State is #1
● echo Micro$oft Windows
● echo Steins;Gate
● What happened?
● Many special characters
● Whitespace
● #$*&^?!~'`"\{}[]<>()|;
● What if we want these
characters?
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 Quoting
● Removes specialness
● Hard quotes: '…'
● Quote everything
except closing '
● Soft quotes: "…"
● Allow variables (and
some other things)
● Good practice: "$var"
● Backslash (escaping)
● Quotes next character
CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 11
 Arguments
● In C: argc and argv[]
● Split at whitespace
● How to override this?
● Arguments to a script
● ./script foo bar
● $# is the same as argc
● "$@": all args
● "$1" to "$9": individual
● "$_": last arg, prev cmd

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 12

 Debug mode
● Shows each command
● Variables expanded
● Arguments quoted
● Run with bash -x
● Temporary
● bash -x shello

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 13

 Exercises
● Make a script that:
● Prints its first argument
doubled
./script1 foo
foofoo
● Prints its first four args
in brackets, one per line
./script2 "foo bar" baz
[foo bar]
[baz]
[]
[]

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page 14