Bash, which stands for Bourne-again shell, is a free Unix shell which is used also as a default command line for most Linux distribution. If you’re a Linux/Unix administrator or a Linux enthusiast, I’m pretty sure you’ve met the bash shell before.
These are some tricks in bash shell that I really find useful.
1. Don’t use backticks, use $( command ) instead.
I admit, this is one of the first tricks that I learned also. It’s quite adequate if you’re running just one command:
date_today=`date`
but if you’re planning to nest multiple commands:
current_pid=`cat $HOME/pid/my_pid.\`date +%y%m%d\`.pid`
Yes, you have to escape the backticks. Now, imagine if you have to nest 3 commands… What do you think it will look like?
We can write the two examples in $( command ) form,
date_today=$( date )
current_pid=$( cat $HOME/pid/my_pid.$( date +%y%m%d ).pid )
You can easily nest multiple commands and no “escapes” required. Your script will look tidier too.
2. Same command, different parameter… use {arg1,arg2,…,argN} trick:
If you find yourself running the same command with a different argument most of the time, you can find this trick useful.
user@localhost~$ wget http://file.example.com/file01.log
user@localhost~$ wget http://file.example.com/file06.log
user@localhost~$ wget http://file.example.com/file18.log
You can run this using {arg1,arg2,…,argN}:
user@localhost~$ wget http://file.example.com/file{01,06,18}.log
You can even combine multiple values:
user@localhost~$ wget http://file.example.{com,net,org}/file{01,06,18}.log
Please note that this doesn’t work with some commands, like echo, so test your script first.
3. Same set of commands, different parameter… create a function.
Yes, bash supports functions. If you’re running a set commands and you want to reuse it, this is the way to go.
To declare a function:
function my_function () {
first_parameter=$1
second_parameter=$2 # so on and so forth…
# things to do…
}
Here’s a simple script that I wrote to back up necessary configuration files in my work station.
#!/bin/bash
BACKUP_DIR=$HOME/config.backup
function backup() {
local file # don’t make this variable global
file=$1 # assign first parameter to file
if [ “x$file” != “x” ] # if $file is empty, don’t process
then
mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR # create the destination directory
cp $file $BACKUP_DIR # copy the file
fi
}
backup /etc/apt/sources.list
backup /etc/samba/smb.conf
backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf
That’s it for now. I hope you find these tips useful. Thanks for dropping by.
un-mundane idiosyncrasies 