Bash scripting cheatsheet

Introduction

Example

Variables

Generally quote your variables unless they contain wildcards to expand or command fragments.

String quotes

Shell execution
Conditional execution

Functions

Conditionals

Strict mode
Brace expansion

Same as

Same as

Same as

Same as
Parameter expansions
Basics

Prefix name expansion

Substitution

Remove suffix

Remove prefix

Remove long suffix

Remove long suffix

Remove long prefix

Remove long prefix

Replace first match

Replace all

Replace suffix

Replace prefix

Comments
Substrings

Substring (position, length)

Substring from the right

Length

Length of

Manipulation

Default values
 , or if unset (or null)

Set to if unset (or null)

if is set (and not null)

Show error message and exit if is unset (or null)

Omitting the removes the (non)nullity checks, e.g. expands to if unset otherwise .

Loops

Basic for loop

C-like for loop

Ranges

With step size

Forever

Functions
Defining functions

Returning values
Raising errors

Arguments

Number of arguments

All positional arguments (as a single word)

All positional arguments (as separate strings)

First argument

Last argument of the previous command

Note: and must be quoted in order to perform as described. Otherwise, they do exactly the same
thing (arguments as separate strings).

Conditionals
Conditions

Note that is actually a command/program that returns either (true) or (false). Any program that
obeys the same logic (like all base utils, such as or ) can be used as condition, see
examples.

Empty string

Not empty string

Equal

Not Equal

Equal

Not equal

Less than

Less than or equal

Greater than

Greater than or equal

Regexp

Numeric conditions

More conditions

If OPTIONNAME is enabled

! EXPR Not

And

Or

File conditions
 Exists

Readable

Symlink

Directory

Writable

Size is > 0 bytes

File

Executable

1 is more recent than 2

2 is more recent than 1

Same files

Example
 $B

Arrays

Defining arrays
Working with arrays

Operations

Iteration

Dictionaries
Defining
 Declares as a Dictionary object (aka associative array).

Working with dictionaries

Iteration

Iterate over values

Iterate over keys

Options
Options
Glob options

Set as a colon-separated list of patterns to be removed from glob matches.

History

Commands

Show history

Don’t execute expanded result immediately

Expansions

Expand last parameter of most recent command

Expand all parameters of most recent command

Expand th most recent command

Expand th command in history

Expand most recent invocation of command

Execute last command again

Replace first occurrence of to in most recent command

Replace all occurrences of to in most recent command

Expand only basename from last parameter of most recent command

Expand only directory from last parameter of most recent command

and can be replaced with any valid expansion.

Slices

Expand only th token from most recent command (command is ; first argument is )

Expand first argument from most recent command

Expand last token from most recent command

Expand range of tokens from most recent command

Expand th token to last from most recent command

can be replaced with any valid expansion i.e. , , , etc.

Numeric calculations

Subshells

Redirection

Inspecting commands Trap errors

"ERROR:

Case/switch

Source relative

printf
Transform strings

Operations apply to characters not in the given set

Delete characters

Replaces repeated characters with single occurrence

Truncates

All upper case letters

All lower case letters

All digits

All whitespace

All letters

All letters and digits

Example

Directory of script
Getting options

Heredoc

Reading input

The option disables a peculiar legacy behavior with backslashes.

Special variables
 Exit status of last task

PID of last background task

PID of shell

Filename of the shell script

Last argument of the previous command

return value of piped commands (array)

s.

Go to previous directory

Check for command’s result

Grep check