Overview

Learners will be able to…

Display Bash Environmental Variables to the terminal

and describe their output.

Describe the difference between relative and absolute

paths.

Direct information between files using the following

elements:

| Pipes

> Overwrite Redirection

>> Append Redirection

< Input Redirection

<< Here Documents

Perform the following Bash Expansions

~ Tilde Expansion

{ } Brace Expansion

${ } Parameter Expansions

$(( )) Arithmetic Expansion

Substitute characters and commands using Wild Card

Characters, Character Sets, and Command Substitution

Locate files using basic file globbing.

info

Make Sure You Know

This assignment assumes the learner has no previous experience with
Bash scripting.

Limitations
This assignment is an overview of important scripting concepts that
learners should be familiar with before attempting upcoming
assignments.
What is Bash?
Bash is a shell, a program that lets us interact with the computer. The
name “Bash” is short for B.ourne A.gain SH.ell.

Many times, we’ll type Bash commands one-by-one in the terminal. We can
also create and run bash scripts, which are files that contain several lines
of bash commands and can be run like any other program.

Bash scripts allow us to build logic, text formatting, and other helpful tools
into files that we can distribute or use to automate command execution.

Let’s make sure we have Bash installed on our system before we can use its
tools. It’s pre-installed in most Linux systems, but it’s always good to check
and be sure that it’s available.

Copy and paste the following command in the terminal to

see which Bash version is available to you:

bash --version

For our exercises, we’ll be using Bash version .

bash version

When a user opens a terminal, the default shell opens in the window. The
$SHELL environmental variable shows us exactly what shell is open.

Copy the line into the terminal and press return to see
which shell we’re using:

echo $SHELL

You should see that we’re using a Bash shell /bin/bash.

Checkpoint

Which of the following best describes the $SHELL variable?

Environment Variables
Environment variables are defined for us, by the system. They provide
information about our scripting environment.

A Linux environment variable can be global or local.

Global
A globally scoped environment variable can be accessible from anywhere
in that terminal’s environment. It may be used in any script, application, or
process connected to that terminal.

We can set new global commands using the syntax below.

export NAME=value

Let’s create a global variable named IRONMAN and set the

value of the variable to Tony.

export IRONMAN=Tony

We can recall the value of this variable using echo and the dollar sign $.

echo $IRONMAN

The set command will show us global and local environmental variables
that are defined in the shell.

Click the button below to run the set command and see that
IRONMAN is included in this list.

We can unset a global environment variable using the unset command.

unset IRONMAN

Check to see that the variable IRONMAN is, indeed, empty.

 echo $IRONMAN

Local
Locally scoped environment variables are not accessible to every
application or process running in the terminal. It can only be accessed by
the terminal that defined it.

We can set a new local environment variable using the following syntax.

NAME=value

We can also unset a local variable.

NAME=''

We can use the printenv command to display all of the local environment
variables that are currently defined.

printenv

Let’s explore a few environmental variables below.

Variable Description Try It!

$PATH Directories searched for commands
$HOME User’s home directory
$USER User of the session
$PWD Path of the present working directory
$HOME User’s home directory.

A Few More Common Variables

Here are a few more variables that you may encounter. Feel free to
retrieve their values in the terminal using echo $.

$TERM - type of command-line terminal being used

$EDITOR - user’s default editor

 $HOSTNAME - hostname of the machine

$SHELL - the shell currently in use

Checkpoint

Match the environmental variable with it’s description.

File Paths
A file path is a text string that represents a file or directory. We use paths
to refer to files and directories on the file system.

Slashes / in a path separate directory names, leading to the directory or

file.

There are two types of file paths: absolute paths and relative paths.

Absolute Path
An absolute path defines a location from the highest level, or root, of the
file system, indicated by a slash /, to a certain directory or file. These are
useful when we want to prevent confusion about the location of a file or
directory.

Click the button below print the absolute path to our current working
directory in the terminal with the pwd command.

We can also specify the absolute path to a file within the current directory.
For example, the absolute path from the root directory to the file
champs.txt would be:

/home/codio/workspace/champs.txt

info

## Notice
Both of these paths begin with \, meaning they being at the root
directory.

The user’s home directory can be referred to with the tilde character ~.
This allows us to define absolute file paths without knowing the exact name
of the user’s home directory.

~/workspace/champs.txt
Relative Filename
A relative path is a portion of a path that starts from the user’s current
working directory rather than the root directory.

A command will always execute in the current working directory unless we

tell it to use files with a path leading to a different location.

These paths are considered relative because if the working directory

changes, the path leading to a specific file location changes as well.

Relative paths do not start at the root directory, so they do not start with a
slash /.

Consider our current working directory.

/home/codio/workspace

We can refer to a folder’s location based on it’s relationship to this

directory. If we want to refer to the ExampleFolder directory from here, the
following would be its relative path in relation to our current directory.

ExampleFolder

We can use .. to refer to the current directory’s parent directory, or the

directory just above this one in the system hierarchy.

Let’s change directories to the parent of our current

working directory with the following command.

cd ..

Now display your new working directory.

pwd

If we were to change our working directory, the relative path to the same
folder would change in relation to our new folder. The relative path to
ExampleFolder from our new directory would be:

workspace/ExampleFolder

Checkpoint
Fill in the blanks to complete the statement below.
Built-In Bash Commands
Using a shell, like bash, involves running commands like:
- ls
- rm
- grep
- arc

These aren’t bash commands. They’re installed programs. Bash does,

however, have certain built-in commands that we can use.

These built-ins can be bash-specific or share names with other commands

on the system.

echo

The echo command displays text to the terminal. Use the button below to
run this command with the text Hey, all you people in the terminal.
Because echo ends a line with a new line character, it can be used to output
text to the user without issue.

echo Hey, all you people!

printf

The printf built-in also displays text, but without the new line character at
the end. Use the button below to run printf with the string input "Won't
you listen to me?".

printf "Won't you listen to me?"

source

source reads and executes the contents of a file (generally a set of

commands) passed as an argument. The command takes the contents of the
provided files and passes them to the command line interpreter as a text
script.

When filename is performed, any arguments become positional

parameters. The other settings stay unchanged. If $PATH does not include
FILENAME, it searches the current directory for it.
The source command takes only one parameter, the file.

Check out the contents of the file commands.txt

cat commands.txt

Let’s perform the commands within the file commands.txt using the source
command.

source /home/codio/workspace/commands.txt

These examples barely scratch the surface of all of Bash’s built-in

commands. You can see a full list of built-ins on it’s man pages.

man bash

Checkpoint

Fill in the blanks to complete the statement.

Challenge 1

In the file to the left, challenge1.sh, complete the following:

1. Write a command to display Hello from user: _____

To fill in the blank, use the environmental variable containing the
user’s name.
2. Write a command to display Our home directory is: _____
To fill in the blank, use the environmental variable containing the
home directory.
3. Write a command to display The shell we're using is: _____
To fill in the blank, use the environmental variable containing the
name of the shell currently in use.
4. Write a command to display Our current working directory is:
_____
To fill in the blank, use the environmental variable containing the
current working directory.
5. Run the contents of the file commands2.txt using the source command
and the file’s absolute filename.

Click the Try It! button to run your script in the terminal
and check your output. It should look similar to the output
below.

Challenge Expected Output

When you are finished writing your script, click the Check
It! button to check your work.
Redirection
##

Redirection and Piping are two ways we can control command input and
output in Bash.

Redirection sends streams of information either to, or from files.

Output Redirection >

Output Redirection > allows us to send the results of a command to a file.
It sends the standard output stdout by default. If we use > to redirect to an
existing file, the contents of the file will be overwritten.

.guides/img/outputRedirect

Let’s take the results of the pwd command and redirect it to the file
directory.txt using the > character.

pwd > directory.txt

Use cat to display the contents of directory.txt.

cat directory.txt

Output Redirection (Append) >>

We can redirect information onto the end of an existing file by using >>.
This appends the results of a command to the end of the file’s contents.

Let’s append the results of ls to the end of directory.txt.

ls >> directory.txt

Now, let’s display the new contents of directory.txt to display the

appended information.

cat directory.txt

Redirection works using data streams available in Bash:

- Standard Input stdin - Receives text data as input.
- Standard Output stdout - Stores the text output of a command.
- Standard Error stderr - Records the error message when a command
fails.

These data streams are given unique file descriptor numbers. We can
access the data by referring to its file descriptor number as described by
the table below.

Data Stream FD Number

stdin 0

stdout 1

stderr 2

Let’s try to list a non-existent directory in the terminal.

ls /fakedir

Here, we get an error message:

ls: cannot access '/fakedir': No such file or directory

Let’s redirect the following:

The standard output, using 1, to a file output.txt, and

The standard output, using 2, to a file error.txt

ls /fakedir 1>output.txt 2>error.txt

Now, we can check the contents of each file.

cat output.txt
cat error.txt

Input Redirection <

Input redirection < can also be used to extract data from a file and seem as
if it were entered as standard input.

.guides/img/inputRedirect

In this example, we’ll use input redirection to use the output of champs.txt
as input to the cat command.

cat < champs.txt

Here Document <<

A here document << is a variation of redirection that lets us input text
freely until the command encounters a specified string delimiter to
represent the end of input.

When using a here document, make sure that the specified string is
unique so it isn’t confused for any other line in the input.

We’ll specify ThisIsTheEnd as our unique string and enter a series of

lines as input.
 cat << ThisIsTheEnd
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality
ThisIsTheEnd

The command above displays the lines of input up to the termination

string.

Checkpoint

Complete the following redirections in the terminal.

1. Redirect the results of echo "Disk Space Usage Report" into a file called
diskspace.txt.
2. Append the results of the df command onto diskspace.txt
3. Redirect the output of diskspace.txt into the terminal display using cat
4. Redirect the following lines into the terminal display using cat and the
delimiter EndOfReport.
I have reported the usage of disk space in KBs.
If you'd like, I can also run the report in megabytes
It would be as easy as using the df -m command
Piping
Piping

Piping connects the output of two processes by sending the first process’
output to the second process as input, without being displayed on the
screen.

As long as the output of one command can be used as input for another,
pipes (|) allow you to chain commands. They are used in Bash scripting to
create custom flows.

.guides/img/pipe

We can use the cat command to look at the contents of a file champs.txt
that holds every winning NFL Super Bowl team in history.

cat champs.txt

This is a lot of information. We can pipe (|) the output of the previous
command into the less command to display this information page by page.

cat champs.txt | less

You can use the UP or DOWN arrows to move up and down the file line by
line.

To move through the file page by page:

- Use fn + UP or fn + DOWN if you’re on a MAC.
- Use PgUp or PgDown if you’re on a Windows machine.

Press the q key to quit.

We can use the wc command to count how many lines are in this file by
piping the output of a cat command to the input of the wc command.

cat champs.txt | wc

You can string many pipes together, as long as the output of a command
makes sense as input for the next command.

Piping and redirection seem similar, but we use them differently. Mainly,
piping sends information from one process to another, while redirection
sends information to and from files.

For reference, you can find the different characters we use for redirection
and piping below.

> - Output redirection (overwrite)

>> - Output redirection (append)
< - Input redirection
<< - Here document
| - Pipe

Checkpoint

Fill in the blank to complete the statement.

Challenge 2

In the file to the left, challenge2.sh, complete the following:

1. Write a command to redirect the message Reporting for user:

_____ into a file called introduction.txt.

To fill in the blank, use the environmental variable containing the

user’s name.

2. Write a command to append the message The home directory is:

_____ into the file introduction.txt

To fill in the blank, use the environmental variable containing the

home directory.

3. Write a command to list the contents of the imaginary directory

/notReally and:

Redirect the standard output of the command to a file called

output.txt
Redirect the standard error to a file called error.txt.

4. Write a command to:

Redirect the contents of a file called champs.txt to be used as input

into the command sort
Redirect the results of the input redirection into a file called alpha-
winners.txt

5. Using the cat command, pipe the contents of the file alpha-
winners.txt into the less command

6. Click the Try It! button to run your script in the terminal and check
your output. It should look similar to the output below.
#

When you are finished writing your script, click the Check
It! button to check your work.
Tilde Expansion
It’s common to need to use unknown values when we work with Bash. For
example, we might need to use the path to a user’s home folder, the user’s
own data, or the result of a calculation.

In Bash, you can use expansions and substitutions to show these values.
When they are run, they are read and replaced with a value or group of
values.

Tilde Expansion ~

The tilde expansion is used to represent a user’s home directory. Type the
following in the terminal to display your home directory.

echo ~

We can see that our home directory is:

/home/codio

We can use ~ and the name of a user if we want to retrieve the home
directory of a specific user.

echo ~codio

Tilde expansion lets us work in a user’s home directory even if we don’t

know their user name.

We can use tilde + plus ~+ to represent the PWD, or to present the current
directory that we’re working in.

We can use tilde + dash ~- to represent the OLDPWD, or the previous

directory you were in if you’ve changed directories.

Checkpoint

We can use expansions and substitutions to…

Brace Expansion
Brace expansion {} lets us substitute elements from a list of values
separated by commas, or ranges of numbers or letters separated by two
periods.

Brace expansion is commonly used to preserve part of a path but replace a

small portion of it.

echo /tmp/{one,two,three}/file.txt

We can use it to present a set of values to use in the same part of a string.

echo r{i,o,u}se

We can also use brace expansion to create a sequence of numbers or

letters.

echo {1..10}

echo {a..z}

We can also add intervals to sequences with a third argument in our brace
expansion. The following command displays numbers in intervals
of .

echo {0..20..2}

We can create a few files neatly labeled filed with sequential numbering
and lettering.

touch file_{1..3}{a..c}

We can also remove these files sequentially.

rm file_{1..3}{a..c}

Brace expansion can also be used to work with lists of things.

 echo {earth,wind,fire}_{1..3}

Checkpoint

Complete the following in the terminal.

1. Use the touch command and brace expansion to create files named
image_N.extension where:

N is a number ranging from to

extension is a set of file types including:
.gif
.png, and
.jpeg
File names should look similar to:
image_1.gif
image_2.jpg
image_1.png

2. Use the rm command to remove every file you just created with a single
command.
Parameter Expansion
Parameter expansion allows us to retrieve and modify stored values. The
symbol for this is ${...}.

The most common usage of parameter expansion is setting and retrieving

values, like with variables in scripting.

To do this, we:
- set a parameter to a value, then
- use the dollar sign with the parameter name to get it later.

In parameter expansion, braces are often used to indicate which parameter

is being used and avoid the shell confusing it with neighboring words or
characters.

Let’s set a parameter in the terminal:

book="Where The Sidewalk Ends"

We can retrieve the value of the parameter with a dollar sign $ and the
name of the parameter.

echo $book

Parameter expansion can be used to change the stored value when it is

used by using only part of it or replacing parts of it before use.

For example, echo ${book:6} returns the parameter’s value starting with
the sixth character in the string.

echo ${book:6}

Or echo ${book:6:3} will retrieve the value starting at the sixth character
and going for three characters.

The first character in the string is in position .

Parameter expansion can be used in many ways. To explore more, check
out the bash man pages by typing man bash in the terminal. Type / and
press return to search the “Parameter Expansion” header.

Pattern Substitution

Pattern substitution is a parameter expansion feature that lets us obtain a

value and change it depending on a pattern. This is commonly used for
replacing a word or character using the pattern below.

echo ${variableName/oldWord/newWord}

Below is a complete pattern substitution example.

echo ${book/Ends/Begins}

In Pattern Substitution, one slash after the parameter replaces the first
instance of a match, and two slashes replaces them all.

Let’s replace all e’s with ampersands & using two forward slashes //.

echo ${book//e/&}

Now, let’s do the same thing with only one slash.

echo ${book/e/&}

Be sure to use the braces for most parameter expansions. If we left them
off, the shell will read the part after the parameter name as characters and
show them instead of using them to achieve what we wanted.

echo $book/e/$

Checkpoint

Complete the following in the terminal.

1. Set a parameter called title and assign it the value Avatar: The
Last Airbender.

2. Use echo and parameter expansion to replace all of the a’s with an
underscore _.
Arithmetic Expansion
Bash can perform arithmetic expansion and then use the result in a
command. This is represented by a dollar sign and two parentheses
$((...)) containing a mathematical expression.

Bash previously used a dollar sign surrounded by single brackets, but this
is now obsolete, though may be present in older scripts.

Let’s do some calculations in the terminal.

Let’s start by adding four and five.

echo $(( 4 + 5 ))

Subtract five from ten.

echo $(( 10 - 5 ))

Then, multiply six by three.

echo $(( 6 * 3 ))

Finally, divide nine by ten.

echo $(( 9 / 10 ))
 important

Integers Only!
Bash can only work with integers. $ 9 / 10 = 0.9$, which is less than .
Since Bash can only handle integers, this operation gives us a result of
zero.

Checkpoint

Use the arithmetic expansion to perform the following

calculations in the terminal.

1. plus multiplied by .

2. minus divided by .

3. divided by .
Challenge 3

In the file to the left, challenge3.sh, complete the following:

1. Write a command to display the current user’s working directory

using tilde expansion.

2. Using brace expansion, write a command to display numbers

through in intervals of

3. Using the mkdir command and brace expansion to create directories

named TYPE_filesN where:

TYPE is an image file type including:

png
jpg, and
pdf
N is a number ranging from to .

4. Use the touch command and brace expansion to create files inside
each directory named image_N where:

N is a number ranging from to

File names should look similar to:

image_1
image_2

5. Use the rm command to remove every file you just created with a single
command.

6. Now use the rmdir command to remove every directory we’ve created
with a single command.

7. Write a command to display 6 times 3 is equal to: _____

To fill in the blank, use arithmetic expansion to perform the

calculation and display the correct answer.

8. Set a parameter called message and assign it the value impossible

work!.

9. Using parameter expansion, write a command to display the value

of message starting from the character in position 2.
10. Click the Try It! button to run your script in the terminal and
check your output. It should look similar to the output below.

When you are finished writing your script, click the Check
It! button to check your work.
Wild Card Characters
In Linux, a wild card is a symbol or group of symbols that replace other
characters. It can replace any character in a string. These are helpful for
finding texts that are similar in some way, but not the same.

Asterisk *: used to match any number of characters (zero or more)

ls *.txt

ls d*

Question Mark ?: used to find exactly one character of any type. If we

want to find two characters, we need to use two question marks ??

Square Brackets [ ]: used to match a set of characters inside.

Exclamation Point ! excludes characters from a list defined inside square

brackets.

Named Character Classes

Named character classes are used to print values that have been given a
name. Their value is determined by the LC_CTYPE locale. A few examples
include:
- [:alnum:]: Prints all files that include alphabets and numbers. Both lower
and uppercase letters are taken into account.
- [:alpha:]: Prints all files that exclusively contain alphabets. Both lower
and uppercase letters are taken into account.
- [:digit:]: prints all files that include digits.
- [:lower:]: prints all files with lower-case letters.
- [:punct:]: prints all files that include punctuation characters, including:
- ! " # $ % &' () * +, –. /: ; = >? @ [] '|.
- [:space:]: prints all files that contain space characters.
- [:upper:]: prints all files with lower-case letters.

Checkpoint

Select all of the options that would be returned using the

following wildcard command:
ls i*.p*
Command Substitution
Command substitution lets us use the output of one command inside
another. This is represented as a dollar sign followed by a command
enclosed in parentheses $(...).

Bash uses a sub shell to run the specified command and the output is
returned to the current command.

It’s typically used with string manipulation tools to extract data from a
command’s output that has to be passed back up to the parent command.

.guides/img/commandSub

Let’s explore command substitution:

We could use uname -r to find the kernel release version and use command
substitution in an echo statement to display this information to the user.

echo "The kernel is $(uname -r)."

This is typically used in scripts to retrieve the user’s installed version of

something.

If we have a complex set of commands that rely on the results of other

commands, we can nest command substitutes within one another.

echo "Today is $(date)."

 echo "Computer name is $(hostname)."

Checkpoint

Command substitution works by…

File Globbing
File globbing detects wild card patterns and expands them into a file path.

Globs and regular expressions are very similar. Globs specifically match
file names, where regular expressions match text.

Let’t explore a few patterns.

Click the button below to begin.

Asterisk * matches any number of any characters in a filename.

ls *.txt

ls c*.txt

Question Mark ? is used to locate one single character of any type.

ls doc1?.txt

ls doc??.txt

[] matches to one character within a range.

ls doc[1-5].png

ls doc[1-5][a-e].png

A caret ^ along with square brackets describes a globbing pattern with

more detail.

We can also match a character against certain character classes.

ls doc[[:digit:]]a.txt
 ls doc[[:digit:]][[:lower:]].txt

We use wildcards with file globbing to determine which types of a single

character can be present in a filename.

If we want to match against whole words, we would use brace expansion.

ls {*.txt,*.png}

When you’re finished exploring, click the button below to

clean up our file tree.

Checkpoint

Fill in the blanks to complete the statement.

Challenge 4

In the file to the left, challenge4.sh, complete the following:

1. Write a command to display The current network host name is:

_____

Fill in the blank using command substitution and the hostname

command to return the network host name.

2. Write a command using wildcard characters to list all of the .txt

files that begin with c.

3. Write a command using a named character class to list all of the

files that contain a number.

4. Write a command using the ? wildcard character to list all of the

documents with filenames similar to file2_.txt.

The blank may contain only one of any type of character.

5. Click the Try It! button to run your script in the terminal and
check your output. It should look similar to the output below.

When you are finished writing your script, click the Check
It! button to check your work.