Module 3 Cheat Sheet - Introduction to Shell

Scripting
Bash shebang

#!/bin/bash

Get the path to a command

which bash

Pipes, filters, and chaining

Chain filter commands together using the pipe operator:

ls | sort -r

Pipe the output of manual page for ls to head to display the first 20 lines:

man ls | head -20

Use a pipeline to extract a column of names from a csv and drop duplicate names:

cut -d "," -f1 names.csv | sort | uniq

Working with shell and environment variables:

set

Define a shell variable called my_planet and assign value Earth to it:

my_planet=Earth

Display value of a shell variable:

echo $my_planet

Reading user input into a shell variable at the command line:

read first_name

Tip: Whatever text string you enter after running this command gets stored as the value of the
variable first_name .

List all environment variables:

env

Environment vars: define/extend variable scope to child processes:

export my_planet
export my_galaxy='Milky Way'

Metacharacters

Comments # :

# The shell will not respond to this message

Command separator ; :

echo 'here are some files and folders'; ls

ls *.json

Single character wildcard ? :

ls file_2021-06-??.json

Quoting

Single quotes '' - interpret literally:

echo 'My home directory can be accessed by entering: echo $HOME'

Double quotes "" - interpret literally, but evaluate metacharacters:

echo "My home directory is $HOME"

Backslash \ - escape metacharacter interpretation:

echo "This dollar sign should render: \$"

I/O Redirection

Redirect output to file and overwrite any existing content:

echo 'Write this text to file x' > x

Append output to file:

echo 'Add this line to file x' >> x

Redirect standard error to file:

bad_command_1 2> error.log

Append standard error to file:

Redirect file contents to standard input:

$ tr “[a-z]” “[A-Z]” < a_text_file.txt

The input redirection above is equivalent to:

$cat a_text_file.txt | tr “[a-z]” “[A-Z]”

Command Substitution

Capture output of a command and echo its value:

THE_PRESENT=$(date)
echo "There is no time like $THE_PRESENT"

Capture output of a command and echo its value:

echo "There is no time like $(date)"

Command line arguments

./My_Bash_Script.sh arg1 arg2 arg3

Batch vs. concurrent modes

Run commands sequentially:

start=$(date); ./MyBigScript.sh ; end=$(date)

Run commands in parallel:

./ETL_chunk_one_on_these_nodes.sh & ./ETL_chunk_two_on_those_nodes.sh

Open crontab editor:

crontab -e

Job scheduling syntax:

m h dom mon dow command

(minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week)

Tip: You can use the * wildcard to mean "any".

Append the date/time to a file every Sunday at 6:15 pm:

15 18 * * 0 date >> sundays.txt

Run a shell script on the first minute of the first day of each month:

1 0 1 * * ./My_Shell_Script.sh

Back up your home directory every Monday at 3:00 am:

0 3 * * 1 tar -cvf my_backup_path\my_archive.tar.gz $HOME\

Deploy your cron job:

Close the crontab editor and save the file.

List all cron jobs:

crontab -l

Conditionals

if - then - else syntax:

if [[ $# == 2 ]]
then
 echo "number of arguments is equal to 2"
else
echo "number of arguments is not equal to 2"
fi

'and' operator && :

if [ condition1 ] && [ condition2 ]

'or' operator || :

if [ condition1 ] || [ condition2 ]

Logical operators

Operator Definition

== is equal to

!= is not equal to

< is less than

> is greater than

<= is less than or equal to

>= is greater than or equal to

Arithmetic calculations

Integer arithmetic notation:

$(())

Basic arithmetic operators:

Symbol Operation

+ addition

- subtraction

* multiplication

/ division
Display the result of adding 3 and 2:

echo $((3+2))

Negate a number:

echo $((-1*-2))

Arrays

Declare an array that contains items 1 , 2 , "three" , "four" , and 5 :

my_array=(1 2 "three" "four" 5)

Add an item to your array:

my_array+="six"
my_array+=7

Declare an array and load it with lines of text from a file:

my_array=($(echo $(cat column.txt)))

for loops

Use a for loop to iterate over values from 1 to 5:

for i in {0..5}; do
echo "this is iteration number $i"
done

Use a for loop to print all items in an array:

for item in ${my_array[@]}; do

Use array indexing within a for loop, assuming the array has seven elements:
 for i in {0..6}; do
echo ${my_array[$i]}
done

Authors
Jeff Grossman
Sam Propupchuk

Other Contributors
Rav Ahuja

Change Log

Date (YYYY-MM-DD) Version Changed By Change Description

2023-06-07 2.0 Jeff Grossman Added advanced scripting examples

2023-05-17 1.3 Nick Yi Added content

2023-05-09 1.2 Nick Yi Add code blocks, update title

2023-04-26 1.1 Nick Yi ID Review

2023-02-14 1.0 Jeff Grossman Update to reflect module content

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