Fundamentals

of

UNIX

Index

Chapter 1
UNIX Operating System

Objectives
In this session, you learn about: The functions of OS The history of Unix The features of UNIX The Unix architecture Process management CPU scheduling Memory management File management

Operating System (OS)

OS is a system software

OS can be defined as an organized collection of software consisting of procedures for operating a computer
OS provides an environment for execution of programs OS acts as an interface between the user and the hardware of the computer system.

Operating System
Operating system interacts with user in two ways Operating system commands Enables user to interact directly with the operating system. Operating system calls Provides an interface to a running program and the operating system. System calls in UNIX are written in C.

History of UNIX
Ken Thompson of AT&T Bell Laboratories designed UNIX in late 1960s

Two versions of UNIX that emerged are AT&T Unix and BSD Unix
In 1989, AT&T and Sun Microsystems joined together and developed system V release 4 (SVR4) Two of the main standards mainly in use are POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface) and X/open standard. In 1988, MIT formed Xconsortium developed vendor-neutral Xwindow System.

What is Linux?
An open-source UNIX like operating system Initially created by Linus Torvalds for PC architecture Ports exist for Alpha and Sparc processors Developer community world-wide contribute to its enhancement and growth

Features of UNIX
Multi-user, multitasking, timesharing Portability Modularity File structure Security Strong networking support & advanced graphics

Layered Architecture

... cp comp shell as ld

banner ls

kernel hardware

sort

sh who a.out

vi
ed

date grep
wc

UNIX System Architecture

Unix system follows a layered approach. It has four layers

The innermost layer is the hardware layer

In the second layer, the kernel is placed The utilities and other application programs form the third layer Fourth layer is the one with which the user actually interacts.

Kernel
Kernel is that part of the OS which directly makes interface with the hardware system. Actions: Provides mechanism for creating and deleting processes Provides processor scheduling, memory, and I/O management Provides inter-process communication.

The Shell
A utility program that comes with the UNIX system. Features of Shell are: Interactive Processing Background Processing I/O Redirection Pipes Shell Scripts Shell Variables Programming Constructs

Process Management
A process is a program in execution

Several processes can be executed simultaneously in a UNIX system.

A process is generally created using the fork( ) system call. The process that invokes the fork( ) system call is the parent process, and the newly created process is called the child process.

CPU Scheduling
Unix uses round-robin scheduling to support its multi-user and time-sharing feature. Round-robin fashion of scheduling is considered to be the oldest, simplest and widely used algorithm. Every process is given a time slice (10-100 millisec.)

Memory Management
Virtual memory
Swap area Demand paging

File Management
UNIX uses a hierarchical file system with / as its root. Every non-leaf node of the tree is called as a directory file. Every leaf node can either be a file, or an empty directory

File System

dev

bin

tmp home

etc

var spool

lib

usr

sh
console lp0 ls user1

inittab passwd user2

bin

src

File System
File system is the structure in which files are stored on disk

File in UNIX is sequence of bytes organized in the form of blocks

The size of each block is 512 bytes (depends on architecture) Block size can be decided while creating the file system structure

File System Structure

Type of the file Link counter Uid, gid, size Date and time of Creation Date and time of access Date and time of modification : :

Boot Block Super Block Inode Block Data Block

Address of datablock Address of datablock : :

Address of the addr block Address of the addr block Address of the addr block

Common UNIX Flavours

BSD: Solaris: Ultrix: OSF 1: HPUX: AIX: Berkeley, BSD Sun Microsystems, Sys 5/BSD Digital Equipment Corporation, BSD Digital Equipment Corporation, BSD/sys 5 Hewlett-Packard, Sys 5 IBM, Sys 5 / BSD

IRIX:

Silicon Graphics, Sys 5

GNU/Linux: GNU, BSD/Posix

Types of UNIX Users

Broad classification of users
root (most privileged) Non-root (less privileged)

Group
UNIX allows user IDs to be grouped A single user ID can be member of multiple groups

Differentiating users with respect to file access

Owner Group Others

Working With UNIX

User logs in with a valid user ID User logs out to terminate the login session

Summary
In this session, you learned about The functions of OS The History of Unix The features of Unix The Unix Architecture Process management CPU Scheduling Memory management File management

Chapter 2
UNIX Commands

Objectives
In this session, you will learn to: Use the basic Unix commands pwd date who ls man Use man pages

Simple Commands
pwd Displays the current working directory. date Displays the current date and time

Simple Commands
who Displays the names of all the users who have currently logged in who am i Displays the name of the current user.

Listing the Directory Contents

ls Syntax :ls [options] [file.] options: -l list in long format -a list all files including those beginning with a dot -i list inode no of file in first column -s reports disk blocks occupied by file -R recursively list all sub directories -F mark type of each file -C display files in columns

Meta Characters
Meta Characters * ? [] Purpose Example $ ls l *.c file* $ ls l file? $ ls l file[abc] $ cat file1; cat file2 $ cat abc | wc $ (echo ==== x.c ====; cat x.c) > out count=`expr $count + 1` assuming count has value3, this increments the value of count echo expr $count + 1 displays expr $count + 1 echo expr $count + 1 displays expr 3 + 1 assuming the variable count has value 3

Match with one or more characters or none Match with any single character Match with any single character within the brackets ; Command separator | Pipe two commands () Group commands Useful when the output of thecommand group has to be redirected `command` Execute the command enclosed within back quotes. Useful when the output of a command into a variable in a shell script

string
string

Quote all characters with no substitution (ex. no special meaning for $ ) Quote all characters with substitution. The characters $,\ (back slash) and back quote have special meaning.

Listing the Directory Contents

$ ls l total 6 -rwxr-xr-x drwxr-xr-x -rw-r--r--rw-------rw-r--r--

1 2 1 1 1

user1 user2 user1 user1 user3

projA projD projA projA projC

12373 4096 12831 61440 255

Dec Dec Dec Dec Dec

15 22 12 15 20

14:45 14:00 13:59 11:16 14:29

a.out awkpro c core cs

File access permissions File type

User id Link count Group id

File size in bytes

Date & time of modification

File name

Getting Help on Commands

The Unix manual, usually called man pages, is available online to explain the usage of the Unix system and commands. Syntax: man [options] command_name
Common Options -k keyword list command synopsis line for all keyword matches -M path path to man pages -a show all matching man pages (SVR4)

info command_name - help for commands help -command_name gives command synatx

Summary
In this session, you have learned to use the basic Unix commands like pwd date who ls man use man pages

Chapter 3
Files & Directories

Objectives
In this session, you will learn to: set file permissions using the chmod command use directory-related commands namely mkdir, rmdir, cd commands use file-related commands namely cp, mv, rm commands access advanced file permissions using commands umask, suid, sgid, linking files, stickybit create and edit files using the vi editor

File Access Permissions

Refers to the permissions associated with a file with respect to the following Permission Levels User (owner) (u) Group (wheel, staff, daemon, etc.) (g) World (guest, anonymous and all other users) (o) Permission Settings Read (r) Write (w) Execute (x)

File Access Permissions

No read permission does not allow the user to: List the contents of directory Remove the directory No Write permission does not allow the user to : copy files to the directory remove files from the directory rename files in the directory make a subdirectory remove a subdirectory from the directory move files to, and from the directory

File Access Permissions

No execute permission does not allow the user to:

display the contents of a directory file from within the directory

change to the directory

display a file in the directory copy a file to, or from the directory

Changing Permissions - chmod

chmod u+x file_name Syntax: chmod <category> <operation> <permission> <filename(s)> or chmod <octal number> filename Octal Number 4 - for read 2 - for write 1 - for execution $ chmod 744 xyz this sets read, write and execute permissions for owner, read permission for group and others

Directory Creation
Command Syntax mkdir [OPTION] DIRECTORY $ mkdir <path>/<directory> $ mkdir m <directory> $ mkdir p <directory1>/<directory2>/<directory3> Example: $ mkdir project1 This creates a directory project1 under current directory Note: Write and execute permissions are needed for the directory in which user wants to create a directory

Directory Removal
rmdir command removes directory Syntax rmdir <directory name> Example Removes project1 directory in the current directory rmdir project1 Remove multiple directories rmdir pos1 pos2 Remove the directory recursively rmdir p dir1/dir2/dir3 rmdir removes a directory if it is empty and is not the current directory

Command - cd
cd command is used to change the directory

cd cd .. cd /

- take to the home directory - takes to the parent directory - takes to the root directory

File-Related Commands
File Operation Copying a file Moving a file Removing a file Displaying a file and concatenating files Command cp mv rm cat

Command - cp
Used to copy files across directories Syntax cp <source file> <new file name> Example cp file1 file2

Command - cp
Options to cp -p Copies the file and preserves the following attributes
owner id group id permissions last modification time

-r recursive copy; copy subdirectories under the directory if any -i interactive; prompts for confirmation before overwriting the target file, if it already exists

Command - mv
Used to move a file, or rename a file

Preserves the following details owner id group id permissions Last modification time
-f -i suppresses all prompting (forces overwriting of target) prompts before overwriting destination file

Command - rm
Used to remove a file Syntax : rm file(s) -f -i suppresses all prompting prompts before deleting destination file

-r will recursively remove the file from a directory (can be used to delete a directory along with the content ) Caution: Use i option along with r to get notified on deletion

Command chown & chgrp

$ ls l -rwxr-xr-x 1 user1 training 12373 Dec 15 14:45 a.out -rwxr-xr-x 3 user1 faculty 4096 Dec 24 11:56 awkpro $chown user2 a.out $ls l -rwxr-xr-x 1 user2 training 12373 Dec 15 14:45 a.out -rwxr-xr-x 3 user1 faculty 4096 Dec 24 11:56 awkpro $ chgrp training awkpro $ls l -rwxr-xr-x 1 user2 training 12373 Dec 15 14:45 a.out -rwxr-xr-x 3 user1 training 4096 Dec 24 11:56 awkpro

Command - umask
umask value is used to set the default permission of a file and directory while creating

umask command is used to see the default mask for the file permission
Default umask value will be set in the system environment file like /etc/profile umask 022 will set a mask of 022 for the current session The file permission after setting this umask value will be 644 And the directory permission will be 755

Command - ln
Linking files

Hard Link (in the same filesystem) $ ln /usr/bin/clear /usr/bin/cls

Hard link uses the same inode number Soft Link (in different filesystems also used to link directories) $ ln s /usr/bin/clear /home/user1/cls

Special Permission Bits

Set user ID (SUID) This means that if the SUID bit is set for any application then your user ID would be set as that of the owner of application/file rather than the current user, while running that application set user ID bit can be set in one of the two ways:
chmod u+s <filename> chmod 4755 <filename>
The leftmost octal number 4 indicates set user ID bit to be set, other octal digits indicate regular file permissions. This is meaningful for executable files only.

Special Permission Bits

Set group id (SGID) Just like SUID, setting the SGID bit for a file sets your group ID to the file's group while the file is executing SGID set to a directory ; all files created in the directory will belong to the named group set group ID bit can be set in one of the two ways:
chmod g+s <filename> chmod 2755 <filename>
The leftmost octal number 2 indicates set group ID bit to be set, other octal digits indicate regular file permissions. This is meaningful for executable files only.

Special Permission Bits

Sticky bit (SVTX) Typically set to a directory that is shareable Any user can create a file in such sharable directory Only owner of the file or super user (root) can remove a file from the directory

sticky bit can be set in one of the two ways:

chmod +t <directoryname> chmod 1555 <directoryname>
The leftmost octal number 1 indicates sticky bit to be set, other octal digits indicate regular file permissions.

Vi Editor
vi is a visual editor used to create and edit text files. A screen-oriented text editor Included with most UNIX system distributions Command driven Categories of commands include Cursor movement Editing commands Search and replace commands

The vi editor is invoked by the following command:

$ vi filename

Navigation
Bc a e c k s p a h j k S p a c e l

t qb f hi rn ekw u oo c x www t qb f hi rn ekw u oo c x w 2 t qb f hi rn ekw u oo c x b b b

t qb f hi rn ekw u oo c x $ t qb f hi rn ekw u oo c x ^

Editing Commands
Text insertion / replacement i a I A o O R s - inserts text to the left of the cursor - inserts text to the right of the cursor - inserts text at the beginning of the line - appends text at end of the line - opens line below - opens line above - replaces text from cursor to right - replaces a single character with any number of characters - replaces entire line

Editing Commands
Deletion x 3x dw 2dw dd 2dd - to delete character at cursor position - to delete 3 characters at cursor position - to delete word - to delete 2 word - to delete a line - to delete 2 lines

Editing Commands
Yanking
Y - copy line into buffer

3Y p P

- copy 3 lines into buffer - copy buffer below cursor - copy buffer above cursor

Save and quit

:w - to save

:w! :x :q :q!

- to name a file (:w! filename -> save as) - save and quit - cancel changes - cancel and quit

Search & Replace Commands

The following commands are applicable for vi editor in Linux /pat searches for the pattern pat and places cursor where pattern occurs. repeat last search to change every occurrence in the whole file.

/ :%s/old/new/g

:#,#s/old/new/g

where #,# are replaced with the numbers of the two lines.

Summary
In this session, you have learned how to use file permissions using the chmod command use directory-related commands namely mkdir, rmdir, cd commands use file-related commands namely cp, mv, rm commands access advanced file permissions using commands umask, suid, sgid, linking the files, stickybit create and edit files using the vi editor

Chapter 4
UNIX Utilities

Objectives
In this session, you will learn how to: use the Unix utilities such as cat, echo, touch, more, file, wc, cmp, comm, find employ redirection operators use filters such as sort, grep, cut, head, tail, tr, and paste use communication commands telnet, ftp use backup commands zip/gzip and tar

cat
cat command takes the input from the keyboard, and sends the output to the monitor We can redirect the input and output using the redirection operators $ cat > file1 Type the content here press <ctrl d> $ cat file1 Displays the content of the file $cat >> file1 This will append standard input to the content of file1

touch
touch is used to change the time stamp of the file Syntax: touch [options] file Options: -a to change the access time -m to change the modification time -c no create if not exists touch <file> will change the time of change of the file if the file exists If the file does not exist, it will create a file of zero byte size.

echo & read

echo command is used to print output to the screen
echo This is an example This is an example x=10 echo $x 10

read command allows to read input from user and assign it to the variable specified.
read x

General Purpose Utilities

more Allows user to view one page-full of information at a time. file Used to display the type of the file tty Prints the terminals name

General Purpose Utilities

wc A filter used to count the number of lines, words, and characters in a disk file or from the standard input. -l - displays the number of lines -w - displays the number of words -c - displays the number of characters

General Purpose Utilities

cmp Returns the offset and the line number of the first position where the two files differ. comm col1 - unique lines of first file col2 - unique lines of second file col3 - common lines

General Purpose Utilities

diff Indicate the differences between the files a Lines added d Lines deleted c Lines changed

find
Lets user to search set of files and directories based on various criteria Syntax: find [path...] [expression] [path] where to search [expression] What type of file to search (specified with type option) What action to be applied (exec, print, etc.) Name of the files (specified as part of name option, enclosed in ) Example find . name *.c -print

lists all files with .c extension from the current dir & its subdirectories

find
Finding files on the basis of file size
size [+ ]n[bc]
n represents size in bytes (c) or blocks (b) of 512 bytes find . size 1000c find . size +1000c find . size 1000c lists all files that are exactly 1000 bytes in size lists all files that are more than 1000 bytes in size lists all files that are less than 1000 bytes in size

find
Finding files on the basis of access time (atime) or modified time (mtime)
atime [+-]n
mtime [+-]n
n represents number of days ( actually 24 * n hours)

find . atime 2
find . atime +2 find / mtime 2

lists files accessed exactly 2 days ago

lists files accessed more than 2 days ago lists files modified less than 2 days ago

find
Applying a command on files matching the criteria with exec and ok options
exec command {} \;
command is command to be applied on the matching files (does not prompt user) find . -name *.dat exec ls l {} \; Long listing of all files with .dat extension in the current and its subdirectories

-ok command {} \;
Functionality is similar to exec, but prompts user before applying the command
on the file matching the criteria.

pr
pr Used to display a file in a format to be printed. Breaks up a file into pages with a header, text and footer area Options -l -h -t -n

to alter the length of the file to set the header to suppress the header and the footer to set the line number

Standard Files
Standard Input file Keyboard, file descriptor is 0 Standard Output file Monitor, file descriptor is 1 Standard Error file Monitor, file descriptor is 2

I/O Redirection
< file > file redirect standard input from file redirect standard output to file

2> file
2>&1 $ cat > abc $ ls l > outfile

redirect standard error to file

merge standard error with standard output

$ cat xyz abc > outfile 2> errfile

$ cat xyz abc > outfile 2>&1

Filters
Filters are programs that takes its input from the standard input file, process it, and sends it to the standard output file. Commonly used filter commands sort grep cut head tail paste

sort
Sorts the contents of the given file based on the first char of each line. -n -r -t +num +num [-num] numeric sort (comparison made according to strings numeric value) reverse sort specify delimiter for fields specify sorting field numbers to specify the range

grep
grep -Global Regular Expression Printer is used for searching regular expressions Syntax grep <options> <pattern> <filename(s)>

grep options
-c displays count of the number of occurrences

-n
-v -i

displays line numbers along with the lines

displays all lines except lines matching pattern Ignores case for matching

Patterns
* - matches 0 or more characters [^pqr] - Matches a single character which is not p ,q or r ^pqr -Matches pqr at the beginning of the line pqr$ -Matches pqr at the end of the line . - Matches any one character \ - ignores the special meaning. grep New\[abc\] filename

Filter Command - head

Displays the first n lines of the file $ head -3 file1

Filter Command - tail

Displays the last n lines of a file $ tail -3 file1

Can also specify the line number from which the data has to be displayed till the end of file
$ tail +5 file1

Filter command - tr
tr - translate filter used to translate a given set of characters Example : tr [a-z] [A-Z] < filename This converts standard input read from lower case to upper case. option -s can be used to squeeze the repeated characters.

Filter command - tr
Useful options for tr -s char
Squeeze multiple contiguous occurrences of the character into single char

-d char
Remove the character

Command Piping
Allows the output (only the standard output) of a command to be sent as input to another command. Multiple pipes may appear in one command line.

Example:
$ cat * | wc

$ cat fil1 | head | wc -l

Filter Command tee

tee command allows the normal output to the standard output, as well as to a file Useful to capture intermediate output of a long command pipeline for further processing, or debugging purpose.

Example who | tee userlist cat - | tee file1 | wc -l

Filter Command cut

Used to extract specified columns of a text Option remark -c used to extract characters -d Delimiter for fields -f Field no. Examples $ cut -c2-5 file1 $ cut -d | -f2,3 file1

Filter Command paste

Paste is used to fix two cut portions of the file vertically

-s
-d

Pastes the contents of file2 below file1

Specify delimiter

$ paste -d| file1 file2

Connecting to Remote Systems - telnet

telnet hostname or telnet <ip address>

ftp

Ftp is a file transfer program Provides necessary user interface to the standard File Transfer Protocol Allows users to transfer files to and from a remote host Syntax $ ftp hostname

ftp - commands

Ftp program supports the following commands

get mget put mput

receive file from host receive multiple files from host send file to host send multiple files from host

ftp - commands

Ftp program supports the following commands as well

ls cd lcd

list directory of host change directory on the host change directory on the local machine

To set transfer format ascii set to ascii mode binary set to binary mode

ftp - commands

Progress indication of transfer hash command Quitting ftp session bye command

Compression Utilities
gzip, Usage is very similar to compress and pack utilities in Unix: gzip [-vc] filename where -v displays the compression ratio. -c sends the compressed output to standard output and leaves the original file intact.

gunzip gunzip can uncompress files originally compressed with compress.

Tape Archive - tar

Tar is an archiving utility to store and retrieve files from an archive, known as tarfile. Though archives are created on a tape, it is common to have them as disk files as well.

tar c|t|x [vf destination] source...

Tape Archive - tar

Examples: Create a new tar file containing all .dat files (assuming a.dat, b.dat and c.dat exist) $ tar cf mytar *.dat

Summary
In this session, you have learned to: use the Unix Utilities like cat, echo, touch, more, file, wc, cmp, comm, find employ redirection operators use filters like sort, grep, cut, head, tail, tr, and paste communication commands telnet, ftp backup commands zip/gzip and tar

Chapter 5
Process

Objectives
In this session, you will learn to: Use process-related commands like ps, kill, sleep Start a background process Use background and foreground-related commands like bg, fg, jobs , nice , nohup

Processes
Process - a program in execution When program is executed, a new process is created The process is alive till the execution of the program is complete Each process is identified by a number called pid

Login shell
As soon as the user logs in, a process is created which executes the login shell. Login shell is set for each login in /etc/passwd file.

ps
The ps command is used to display the characteristics of a process It fetches the pid, tty, time, and the command which has started the process. -f lists the pid of the parent process also. -u lists the processes of a given user -a lists the processes of all the users -e lists all the processes including the system processes

Background Process
Enables the user to do more than one task at a time. If the command terminates with an ampersand (&), UNIX executes the command in the background Shell returns by displaying the process ID (PID) and job id of the process

Background Process
nohup
Lets processes to continue to run even after logout
The output of the command is sent to nohup.out if not redirected $ nohup command args $ nohup sort emp.lst & [1] 21356

nohup: appending output to `nohup.out'

Background Process
wait command
can be used when a process has to wait for the output of a background process
The wait command, can be used to let the shell wait for all background processes terminate.

$ wait
It is possible to wait for completion of one specific process as well.

Controlling Background Processes

jobs List the background process fg % <job id> Runs a process in the foreground bg %<job id> Runs a process in the background

Process priority
nice Used to reduce the priority of jobs

The kill Command

kill: Kills or terminates a process
kill command send a signal to the process The default signal is 15 ( SIGTERM) kill -9 (SIGKILL) Terminates the process abruptly

Summary
In this session, you learned to: Define a process Use process-related commands like ps, kill, sleep Start a background process Use background and foreground-related commands like bg, fg, jobs

Chapter 6
UNIX Shell Programming

Objectives
In this session, you will learn to: Use Shell variables

Write scripts to process positional parameters

Use test command Use if construct

Use for loop

Use while loop Use case construct

Define and use functions

Debug shell scripts

Flavours of the Unix shell

Bourne shell C shell Korn shell sh csh ksh

Bourne again shell bash (shell distributed with linux)

Command processing
Displays the shell prompt and reads the command typed by the user. Interprets the command and classifies it as an internal (built-in), or an external command. If it is NOT a built-in command, searches for the command in the PATH-specified directories, and executes that command if it is found.

Shell Features
Parent shell process
fork

$ vi test.c

(bash)
Child shell process

command typed by user

Exec of vi test.c

(bash)

User Mode Kernel Mode

Additional Shell Features

Each shell, apart from the basic features, provides additional features such as: Maintaining command history (C, korn and bash) Renaming (aliasing) a command (C, korn, bash) Command editing (C, korn and bash) Programming language (all shells)

History
some UNIX shells support command history facility to keeps track of commands that were executed facility to rerun previously executed commands bash shell supports the following !! !num recall the last command and execute it. execute nth command where n is the the num specified after !

alias
alias can be used to give new name to an existing command A better name that represents a single command or a sequence of commands to be executed, often with appropriate options alias is an internal command

alias newname=command
$ alias l=ls l The unalias command cancels previously defined alias.

File name substitution

When the user enters a command string, the shell parses the string into following components: Command (the first part of the string, till the first space char) Command arguments (the subsequent parts of the string)

For example, given the command-string ls l *.c, this string contains the ls command and two arguments -l and *.c.

File name substitution

In arguments of a command, the shell recognizes certain characters such as *, ?, [ ], and - as special characters and expands these characters into a filename list before executing the command.

To see how this works, enter following commands while in /bin directory
$ ls a* $ ls ??

Shell Programming
Allows Defining and referencing variables Logic control structures such as if, for, while, case Input and output

Shell Variables
A variable is a name associated with a data value, and it offers a symbolic way to represent and manipulate data variables in the shell. They are classified as follows user-defined variables environment variables predefined variables value assigned to the variable can then be referred to by preceding the variable name with a $ sign.

Shell Variables
The shell provides the facility to define normal, and environment variables. A normal variable can be only used in the shell where it is defined.

An environment variable can be used in the shell where it is defined, plus any child shells invoked from that shell.

Using Normal Variables

To define a normal variable, use the following syntax: variable_name=value Examples: x=10 textline_1=This line was entered by $USER textline_2=This line was entered by $USER allusers=`who` usercount=`who | wc l`

Using Normal Variables

Once variables are defined, one can use the echo command to display the value of each variable: echo $x echo $textline_1 echo $textline_2 echo $allusers echo $usercount

Using Environment Variables

To define an environment variable, use following syntax: variable_name=value export variable_name

Examples: $ x=10; export x $ allusers=`who` ; export allusers

Built-in environment variables

PATH MAIL

BASH_ENV
HOME PWD

USER
LOGNAME PS1

SHELL
TERM

PS2

Sample Shell Script

#! /bin/bash # The above line has a special meaning. It must be the # first line of the script. It says that the commands in # this shell script should be executed by the bash # shell (/bin/bash). # --------------------------------------------------------------echo Hello $USER. echo Welcome to programming shell scripts.. # ---------------------------------------------------------------

Executing Shell Scripts

There are two ways of executing a shell script:

By passing the shell script name as an argument to the shell. For example:
sh script1.sh If the shell script is assigned execute permission, it can be executed using its name. For example:

./script1.sh

Passing Parameters to Scripts

parameter can be passed to a shell script

parameters are specified after the name of the shell script when invoking the script.
Within the shell script, parameters are referenced using the predefined variables $1 through $9. In case of more than 9 parameters, other parameters can be accessed by shifting.

Built-in variables
Following are built-in variables supported
$0, $1$9 - positional arguments

$*
$@ $? $$ $!

- all arguments
- all arguments - exit status of previous command executed - PID of the current process - PID of the last background process

Passing Parameters to Scripts

Consider following shell script:

----------------------script2.sh-------------------------echo Total parameters entered: $# echo First parameter is : $1 echo The parameters are: $* shift echo First parameter is : $1 ----------------------------------------------------------- Execute the above script using the script2.sh these are the parameters command.

Passing Parameters to Scripts

The shell parameters are passed as strings. to pass a string containing multiple words as a single parameter, it must be enclosed within quotes.

For example,
$ ./script2.sh this string is a single parameter

Doing Arithmetic Operations

Arithmetic operations within a shell script can be performed using expr command. Example, x=10 y=5 number_1 = `expr $x + $y` number_2 = `expr $x - $y` number_3 = `expr $x / $y` number_4 = `expr $x \* $y` number_5 = `expr $x % $y`

Using the test Command

The general syntax of test command is:

test expression
The expression can be formed using a combination of shell variables and the operators supported by the test command. These operators provide facility to compare numbers, string and logical values, file types and file access modes.

Using the test Command

To compare two integers using test following operators are available: -eq (equal to) -ne (not equal to) -lt (less than) -le (less than or equal to) -gt (greater than) -ge (greater than or equal to)

Using the test Command

General syntax test expression or [ expression ] test integer1 operator integer2 OR [ integer1 operator integer2 ]

Using the test Command

To compare two strings using the test command, following operators are available: string1 = string2 (equal to, please note it is a single =) string1 != string2 (not equal to) string1 (string is not NULL) -n string1 (string is not NULL and exists) -z string1 (string is NULL and exists)

Using the test Command

The syntax for this string comparison is:

test string1 operator string2 OR [ string1 operator string2 ] OR test operator string OR [ operator string ]

Using the test Command

To check a file type/access permissions using the test command, following operators are available: -s file (file is not empty and exists) -f file (Ordinary file and exists) -d file (file is a directory and exists) -r file (file is readable and exists) -w file (file is write-able and exists) -x file (file is executable and exists)

Using the test Command

To check a file type/access permissions using the test command, following operators are available: -b file (file is a block device and exists) -c file (file is a character device and exists) -p file (file is a named pipe and exists) -g file (file has sticky bit set) -u file (file has setuid bit set) -t file_des (file descriptor is standard output)

Combining Conditions
It is possible to combine conditions by using following operators: -a (logical AND operator) -o (logical OR operator) ! (logical NOT operator)

Combining Conditions
The syntax for this is:

test expression_1 a expression _2, OR [ expression _1 a expression _2 ] test expression_1 o expression _2, OR [ expression_1 o expression_2 ] test ! expression _1 OR [ ! expression _1 ]

Condition Checking in Scripts

Bash shell provides the if command to test if a condition is true. The general format of this command is: if condition then command fi

The condition is typically formed using the test command.

Example
# to check if the current directory is the same as your home directory curdir=`pwd` if test $curdir != $HOME then echo your home dir is not the same as your pesent working directory else echo $HOME is your current directory fi

Checking Multiple Conditions

The complex form of if statement is as follows: if condition_1 then command elif condition_2 then command else command fi

Using for Loop

The Bash shell provides a for loop.

Example:
The syntax of this loop is: for variable in list do command command done for i in 1 2 3 4 5 do echo -n $i \* $i = " " echo `expr $i \* $i ` done

Example
----------------------script.sh-------------------------#! /bin/sh usernames=`who | cut d f1` echo Total users logged in = $#usernames # for user in ${usernames} do echo $user done ------------------------------------------------------------

Using while Loop

The Bash shell provides a while loop. The syntax of this loop is: while condition do command command done

Example
Shell script checks for a blank/non blank string eg: read nam while [ -z $nam ] do read nam done echo the string is $nam

the above piece of code keeps accepting string variable nam until it is non zero in length.

Example
Shell script to compute factorial of a given number #!/bin/bash n=$1 if [ $n -eq 0 ]; then fact=0 else fact=1 while [ $n ne 0 ] do fact=`expr $fact \* $n` n=`expr $n 1` done fi echo $fact

The case Statement

The structure of case statement case value in pattern1) command command;; pattern2) command command;; patternn) command;; esac

Example
#!/bin/bash echo enter 2 nos read num1 read num2 case $choice in 1) res=`expr $num1 + $num2` (contd.)

echo enter 1 (for addition) or 2 (for subtraction)

read choice

echo result is $res;;

1) res=`expr $num1 - $num2` echo result is $res;;

*) echo invalid input;;

esac

Example
#!/bin/bash read number case $number 1) echo 1st break;; 2) echo 2nd break;; 3) echo 3rd break;; *) echo ${number}th break;; esac

Functions
Shell functions are a way to group commands for later execution using a single name for the group. They are executed just like a "regular" command. Shell functions are executed in the current shell context; no new process is created to interpret them. Functions are declared using this syntax: [ function ] name () { command-list; }

Functions
Shell functions can accept arguments Arguments are passed in the same way as given to commands Functions refer to arguments using $1, $2 etc., similar to the way shell scripts refer to command line arguments

Functions
Function to convert standard input into upper case toupper() { tr [a-z] [A-Z] } This function can be used as $ cat abc | toupper

Debugging Shell Scripts

Two options help in debugging shell scripts
-v (verbose) option:
causes shell to print the lines of the script as they are read. $ bash v script-file

-x (verbose) option:
prints commands and their arguments as they are executed. $ bash x script-file

Programming in C vs Shell
Comparison between A solution in C A shell solution written like a C program A proper shell/unix solution e.g: The problem is to count the no of lines in a file ( the file is called the_file)

A solution in C
#include <stdio.h> void main(void) { int lcount=0; FILE *infile; char line[500]; infile=fopen("the_file","r"); while(!feof(infile)) { fgets(line,500,infile); lcount ++; } printf("no of lines is %d\n",lcount); }

A shell solution
count=0 while read line do count=`expr $count + 1` done < the_file echo Number of lines is $count

Solution using existing commands $ wc l the_file

Summary
In this session, you have learned to: Use Shell variables

Write scripts to process positional parameters

Use test command Use if construct

Use for loop

Use while loop Use case construct Define and use functions Debug shell scripts

UNIX Bibliography
UNIX in a Nutshell for BSD 4.3: A Desktop Quick Reference For Berkeley (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1990, ISBN 0-93717520-X). UNIX in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference for System V & Solaris 2.0 (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1992, ISBN 0-56592001-5). The UNIX Programming Environment, Brian W. Kernighan & Rob Pike (Prentice Hall, 1984).

Lab Exercises

Thank You