An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-1 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell S. R. Bourne AT&T Bell Laboratories Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974 (Updated for 4.3BSD by Mark Seiden) ABSTRACT The shell is a command programming language that pro- vides an interface to the UNIX operating system. Its features include control-flow primitives, parameter passing, variables and string substitution. Constructs such as while, if then else, case and for are avail- able. Two-way communication is possible between the shell and commands. String-valued parameters, typi- cally file names or flags, may be passed to a command. A return code is set by commands that may be used to determine control-flow, and the standard output from a command may be used as shell input. The shell can modify the environment in which commands run. Input and output can be redirected to files, and processes that communicate through `pipes' can be invoked. Commands are found by searching directories in the file system in a sequence that can be defined by the user. Commands can be read either from the termi- nal or from a file, which allows command procedures to be stored for later use. 1.0 Introduction The shell is both a command language and a programming language that provides an interface to the UNIX operating system. This memorandum describes, with examples, the UNIX shell. The first section covers most of the everyday requirements of terminal _________________________ This paper describes sh(1). If it's the c shell (csh) you're interested in, a good place to begin is William Joy's paper "An Introduction to the C shell" (USD:4). UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories. May 18, 1994 USD:3-2 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell users. Some familiarity with UNIX is an advantage when reading this section; see, for example, "UNIX for beginners". unix beginn kernigh 1978 Section 2 describes those features of the shell primarily intended for use within shell procedures. These include the control-flow primitives and string-valued variables provided by the shell. A knowledge of a programming language would be a help when reading this section. The last section describes the more advanced features of the shell. References of the form "see pipe (2)" are to a section of the UNIX manual. seventh 1978 ritchie thompson 1.1 Simple commands Simple commands consist of one or more words separated by blanks. The first word is the name of the command to be executed; any remaining words are passed as arguments to the command. For example, who is a command that prints the names of users logged in. The com- mand ls -l prints a list of files in the current directory. The argument -l tells ls to print status information, size and the creation date for each file. 1.2 Background commands To execute a command the shell normally creates a new process and waits for it to finish. A command may be run without waiting for it to finish. For example, cc pgm.c & calls the C compiler to compile the file pgm.c. The trailing & is an operator that instructs the shell not to wait for the com- mand to finish. To help keep track of such a process the shell reports its process number following its creation. A list of currently active processes may be obtained using the ps command. 1.3 Input output redirection Most commands produce output on the standard output that is ini- tially connected to the terminal. This output may be sent to a file by writing, for example, ls -l >file The notation >file is interpreted by the shell and is not passed as an argument to ls. If file does not exist then the shell cre- ates it; otherwise the original contents of file are replaced May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-3 with the output from ls. Output may be appended to a file using the notation ls -l file In this case file is also created if it does not already exist. The standard input of a command may be taken from a file instead of the terminal by writing, for example, wc file; wc * ? &, are called metacharacters. A complete list of metachar- acters is given in appendix B. Any character preceded by a \ is quoted and loses its special meaning, if any. The \ is elided so that echo \\? will echo a single ?, and echo \\\\ will echo a single \. To allow long strings to be continued over more than one line the sequence \newline is ignored. \ is convenient for quoting single characters. When more than one character needs quoting the above mechanism is clumsy and error prone. A string of characters may be quoted by enclosing the string between single quotes. For example, echo xx'****'xx will echo xx****xx The quoted string may not contain a single quote but may contain newlines, which are preserved. This quoting mechanism is the most simple and is recommended for casual use. A third quoting mechanism using double quotes is also available May 18, 1994 USD:3-6 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell that prevents interpretation of some but not all metacharacters. Discussion of the details is deferred to section 3.4. 1.7 Prompting When the shell is used from a terminal it will issue a prompt before reading a command. By default this prompt is `$ '. It may be changed by saying, for example, PS1=yesdear that sets the prompt to be the string yesdear. If a newline is typed and further input is needed then the shell will issue the prompt `> '. Sometimes this can be caused by mistyping a quote mark. If it is unexpected then an interrupt (DEL) will return the shell to read another command. This prompt may be changed by saying, for example, PS2=more 1.8 The shell and login Following login (1) the shell is called to read and execute com- mands typed at the terminal. If the user's login directory con- tains the file .profile then it is assumed to contain commands and is read by the shell before reading any commands from the terminal. 1.9 Summary o ls Print the names of files in the current directory. o ls >file Put the output from ls into file. o ls wc -l Print the number of files in the current directory. o ls grep old Print those file names containing the string old. o ls grep old wc -l Print the number of files whose name contains the string old. o cc pgm.c & Run cc in the background. 2.0 Shell procedures The shell may be used to read and execute commands contained in a May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-7 file. For example, sh file [ args ] calls the shell to read commands from file. Such a file is called a command procedure or shell procedure. Arguments may be supplied with the call and are referred to in file using the positional parameters $1, $2, . For example, if the file wg con- tains who grep $1 then sh wg fred is equivalent to who grep fred UNIX files have three independent attributes, read, write and execute. The UNIX command chmod (1) may be used to make a file executable. For example, chmod +x wg will ensure that the file wg has execute status. Following this, the command wg fred is equivalent to sh wg fred This allows shell procedures and programs to be used interchange- ably. In either case a new process is created to run the com- mand. As well as providing names for the positional parameters, the number of positional parameters in the call is available as $#. The name of the file being executed is available as $0. A special shell parameter $* is used to substitute for all posi- tional parameters except $0. A typical use of this is to provide some default arguments, as in, nroff -T450 -ms $* which simply prepends some arguments to those already given. May 18, 1994 USD:3-8 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell 2.1 Control flow - for A frequent use of shell procedures is to loop through the argu- ments ($1, $2, ) executing commands once for each argument. An example of such a procedure is tel that searches the file /usr/lib/telnos that contains lines of the form fred mh0123 bert mh0789 The text of tel is for i do grep $i /usr/lib/telnos; done The command tel fred prints those lines in /usr/lib/telnos that contain the string fred. tel fred bert prints those lines containing fred followed by those for bert. The for loop notation is recognized by the shell and has the gen- eral form for name in w1 w2 do command-list done A command-list is a sequence of one or more simple commands sepa- rated or terminated by a newline or semicolon. Furthermore, reserved words like do and done are only recognized following a newline or semicolon. name is a shell variable that is set to the words w1 w2 in turn each time the command-list following do is executed. If in w1 w2 is omitted then the loop is executed once for each positional parameter; that is, in $* is assumed. Another example of the use of the for loop is the create command whose text is for i do >$i; done The command create alpha beta ensures that two empty files alpha and beta exist and are empty. The notation >file may be used on its own to create or clear the May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-9 contents of a file. Notice also that a semicolon (or newline) is required before done. 2.2 Control flow - case A multiple way branch is provided for by the case notation. For example, case $# in 1) cat $1 ;; 2) cat $2 <$1 ;; *) echo \'usage: append [ from ] to\' ;; esac is an append command. When called with one argument as append file $# is the string 1 and the standard input is copied onto the end of file using the cat command. append file1 file2 appends the contents of file1 onto file2. If the number of argu- ments supplied to append is other than 1 or 2 then a message is printed indicating proper usage. The general form of the case command is case word in pattern) command-list;; esac The shell attempts to match word with each pattern, in the order in which the patterns appear. If a match is found the associated command-list is executed and execution of the case is complete. Since * is the pattern that matches any string it can be used for the default case. A word of caution: no check is made to ensure that only one pat- tern matches the case argument. The first match found defines the set of commands to be executed. In the example below the commands following the second * will never be executed. case $# in *) ;; *) ;; esac Another example of the use of the case construction is to distin- guish between different forms of an argument. The following example is a fragment of a cc command. May 18, 1994 USD:3-10 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell for i do case $i in -[ocs]) ;; -*) echo \'unknown flag $i\' ;; *.c) /lib/c0 $i ;; *) echo \'unexpected argument $i\' ;; esac done To allow the same commands to be associated with more than one pattern the case command provides for alternative patterns sepa- rated by a . For example, case $i in -x-y) esac is equivalent to case $i in -[xy]) esac The usual quoting conventions apply so that case $i in \\?) will match the character ?. 2.3 Here documents The shell procedure tel in section 2.1 uses the file /usr/lib/telnos to supply the data for grep. An alternative is to include this data within the shell procedure as a here docu- ment, as in, for i do grep $i ! fred mh0123 bert mh0789 ! done In this example the shell takes the lines between ! and ! as the standard input for grep. The string ! is arbitrary, the document being terminated by a line that consists of the string following . May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-11 Parameters are substituted in the document before it is made available to grep as illustrated by the following procedure called edg. ed $3 % g/$1/s//$2/g w % The call edg string1 string2 file is then equivalent to the command ed file % g/string1/s//string2/g w % and changes all occurrences of string1 in file to string2. Sub- stitution can be prevented using \ to quote the special character $ as in ed $3 + 1,\\$s/$1/$2/g w + (This version of edg is equivalent to the first except that ed will print a ? if there are no occurrences of the string $1.) Substitution within a here document may be prevented entirely by quoting the terminating string, for example, grep $i \\# # The document is presented without modification to grep. If parameter substitution is not required in a here document this latter form is more efficient. 2.4 Shell variables The shell provides string-valued variables. Variable names begin with a letter and consist of letters, digits and underscores. Variables may be given values by writing, for example, user=fred box=m000 acct=mh0000 which assigns values to the variables user, box and acct. A variable may be set to the null string by saying, for example, null= May 18, 1994 USD:3-12 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell The value of a variable is substituted by preceding its name with $; for example, echo $user will echo fred. Variables may be used interactively to provide abbreviations for frequently used strings. For example, b=/usr/fred/bin mv pgm $b will move the file pgm from the current directory to the direc- tory /usr/fred/bin. A more general notation is available for parameter (or variable) substitution, as in, echo ${user} which is equivalent to echo $user and is used when the parameter name is followed by a letter or digit. For example, tmp=/tmp/ps ps a >${tmp}a will direct the output of ps to the file /tmp/psa, whereas, ps a >$tmpa would cause the value of the variable tmpa to be substituted. Except for $? the following are set initially by the shell. $? is set after executing each command. $? The exit status (return code) of the last command executed as a decimal string. Most commands return a zero exit status if they complete successfully, otherwise a non-zero exit status is returned. Test- ing the value of return codes is dealt with later under if and while commands. $# The number of positional parameters (in decimal). Used, for example, in the append command to check the number of parameters. $$ The process number of this shell (in decimal). Since process numbers are unique among all existing processes, this string is frequently used to gener- ate unique temporary file names. For example, May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-13 ps a >/tmp/ps$$ rm /tmp/ps$$ $! The process number of the last process run in the background (in decimal). $- The current shell flags, such as -x and -v. Some variables have a special meaning to the shell and should be avoided for general use. $MAIL When used interactively the shell looks at the file specified by this variable before it issues a prompt. If the specified file has been modified since it was last looked at the shell prints the message you have mail before prompting for the next command. This variable is typically set in the file .profile, in the user's login directory. For exam- ple, MAIL=/usr/spool/mail/fred $HOME The default argument for the cd command. The cur- rent directory is used to resolve file name refer- ences that do not begin with a /, and is changed using the cd command. For example, cd /usr/fred/bin makes the current directory /usr/fred/bin. cat wn will print on the terminal the file wn in this directory. The command cd with no argument is equivalent to cd $HOME This variable is also typically set in the the user's login profile. $PATH A list of directories that contain commands (the search path). Each time a command is executed by the shell a list of directories is searched for an executable file. If $PATH is not set then the cur- rent directory, /bin, and /usr/bin are searched by May 18, 1994 USD:3-14 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell default. Otherwise $PATH consists of directory names separated by :. For example, PATH=:/usr/fred/bin:/bin:/usr/bin specifies that the current directory (the null string before the first :), /usr/fred/bin, /bin and /usr/bin are to be searched in that order. In this way individual users can have their own `private' commands that are accessible independently of the current directory. If the command name contains a / then this directory search is not used; a single attempt is made to execute the command. $PS1 The primary shell prompt string, by default, `$ '. $PS2 The shell prompt when further input is needed, by default, `> '. $IFS The set of characters used by blank interpretation (see section 3.4). 2.5 The test command The test command, although not part of the shell, is intended for use by shell programs. For example, test -f file returns zero exit status if file exists and non-zero exit status otherwise. In general test evaluates a predicate and returns the result as its exit status. Some of the more frequently used test arguments are given here, see test (1) for a complete specifica- tion. test s true if the argument s is not the null string test -f file true if file exists test -r file true if file is readable test -w file true if file is writable test -d file true if file is a directory 2.6 Control flow - while The actions of the for loop and the case branch are determined by data available to the shell. A while or until loop and an if then else branch are also provided whose actions are determined by the exit status returned by commands. A while loop has the general form while command-list do command-list done May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-15 The value tested by the while command is the exit status of the last simple command following while. Each time round the loop command-list is executed; if a zero exit status is returned then command-list is executed; otherwise, the loop terminates. For example, while test $1 do shift done is equivalent to for i do done shift is a shell command that renames the positional parameters $2, $3, as $1, $2, and loses $1. Another kind of use for the while/until loop is to wait until some external event occurs and then run some commands. In an until loop the termination condition is reversed. For example, until test -f file do sleep 300; done commands will loop until file exists. Each time round the loop it waits for 5 minutes before trying again. (Presumably another process will eventually create the file.) 2.7 Control flow - if Also available is a general conditional branch of the form, if command-list then command-list else command-list fi that tests the value returned by the last simple command follow- ing if. The if command may be used in conjunction with the test command to test for the existence of a file as in if test -f file then process file else do something else fi An example of the use of if, case and for constructions is given May 18, 1994 USD:3-16 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell in section 2.10. A multiple test if command of the form if then else if then else if fi fi fi may be written using an extension of the if notation as, if then elif then elif fi The following example is the touch command which changes the `last modified' time for a list of files. The command may be used in conjunction with make (1) to force recompilation of a list of files. flag= for i do case $i in -c) flag=N ;; *) if test -f $i then ln $i junk$$; rm junk$$ elif test $flag then echo file \\'$i\\' does not exist else >$i fi esac done The -c flag is used in this command to force subsequent files to be created if they do not already exist. Otherwise, if the file does not exist, an error message is printed. The shell variable flag is set to some non-null string if the -c argument is encoun- tered. The commands ln ; rm make a link to the file and then remove it thus causing the last modified date to be updated. May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-17 The sequence if command1 then command2 fi may be written command1 && command2 Conversely, command1 command2 executes command2 only if command1 fails. In each case the value returned is that of the last simple command executed. 2.8 Command grouping Commands may be grouped in two ways, { command-list ; } and ( command-list ) In the first command-list is simply executed. The second form executes command-list as a separate process. For example, (cd x; rm junk ) executes rm junk in the directory x without changing the current directory of the invoking shell. The commands cd x; rm junk have the same effect but leave the invoking shell in the direc- tory x. 2.9 Debugging shell procedures The shell provides two tracing mechanisms to help when debugging shell procedures. The first is invoked within the procedure as set -v (v for verbose) and causes lines of the procedure to be printed as they are read. It is useful to help isolate syntax errors. It may be invoked without modifying the procedure by saying May 18, 1994 USD:3-18 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell sh -v proc where proc is the name of the shell procedure. This flag may be used in conjunction with the -n flag which prevents execution of subsequent commands. (Note that saying set -n at a terminal will render the terminal useless until an end-of-file is typed.) The command set -x will produce an execution trace. Following parameter substitu- tion each command is printed as it is executed. (Try these at the terminal to see what effect they have.) Both flags may be turned off by saying set - and the current setting of the shell flags is available as $-. 2.10 The man command The following is the man command which is used to diplay sections of the UNIX manual on your terminal. It is called, for example, as man sh man -t ed man 2 fork In the first the manual section for sh is displayed.. Since no section is specified, section 1 is used. The second example will typeset (-t option) the manual section for ed. The last prints the fork manual page from section 2, which covers system calls. May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-19 cd /usr/man : 'colon is the comment command' : 'default is nroff ($N), section 1 ($s)' N=n s=1 for i do case $i in [1-9]*) s=$i ;; -t) N=t ;; -n) N=n ;; -*) echo unknown flag \\'$i\\' ;; *) if test -f man$s/$i.$s then ${N}roff man0/${N}aa man$s/$i.$s else : 'look through all manual sections' found=no for j in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 do if test -f man$j/$i.$j then man $j $i found=yes fi done case $found in no) echo \'$i: manual page not found\' esac fi esac done Figure 1. A version of the man command 3.0 Keyword parameters Shell variables may be given values by assignment or when a shell procedure is invoked. An argument to a shell procedure of the form name=value that precedes the command name causes value to be assigned to name before execution of the procedure begins. The value of name in the invoking shell is not affected. For exam- ple, user=fred command will execute command with user set to fred. The -k flag causes arguments of the form name=value to be interpreted in this way anywhere in the argument list. Such names are sometimes called keyword parameters. If any arguments remain they are available as positional parameters $1, $2, . The set command may also be used to set positional parameters from within a procedure. For example, set - * May 18, 1994 USD:3-20 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell will set $1 to the first file name in the current directory, $2 to the next, and so on. Note that the first argument, -, ensures correct treatment when the first file name begins with a -. 3.1 Parameter transmission When a shell procedure is invoked both positional and keyword parameters may be supplied with the call. Keyword parameters are also made available implicitly to a shell procedure by specifying in advance that such parameters are to be exported. For example, export user box marks the variables user and box for export. When a shell proce- dure is invoked copies are made of all exportable variables for use within the invoked procedure. Modification of such variables within the procedure does not affect the values in the invoking shell. It is generally true of a shell procedure that it may not modify the state of its caller without explicit request on the part of the caller. (Shared file descriptors are an exception to this rule.) Names whose value is intended to remain constant may be declared readonly. The form of this command is the same as that of the export command, readonly name Subsequent attempts to set readonly variables are illegal. 3.2 Parameter substitution If a shell parameter is not set then the null string is substi- tuted for it. For example, if the variable d is not set echo $d or echo ${d} will echo nothing. A default string may be given as in echo ${d-.} which will echo the value of the variable d if it is set and `.' otherwise. The default string is evaluated using the usual quot- ing conventions so that echo ${d-'*'} will echo * if the variable d is not set. Similarly May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-21 echo ${d-$1} will echo the value of d if it is set and the value (if any) of $1 otherwise. A variable may be assigned a default value using the notation echo ${d=.} which substitutes the same string as echo ${d-.} and if d were not previously set then it will be set to the string `.'. (The notation ${=} is not available for positional parameters.) If there is no sensible default then the notation echo ${d?message} will echo the value of the variable d if it has one, otherwise message is printed by the shell and execution of the shell proce- dure is abandoned. If message is absent then a standard message is printed. A shell procedure that requires some parameters to be set might start as follows. : ${user?} ${acct?} ${bin?} Colon (:) is a command that is built in to the shell and does nothing once its arguments have been evaluated. If any of the variables user, acct or bin are not set then the shell will aban- don execution of the procedure. 3.3 Command substitution The standard output from a command can be substituted in a simi- lar way to parameters. The command pwd prints on its standard output the name of the current directory. For example, if the current directory is /usr/fred/bin then the command d=`pwd` is equivalent to d=/usr/fred/bin The entire string between grave accents (``) is taken as the com- mand to be executed and is replaced with the output from the com- mand. The command is written using the usual quoting conventions except that a ` must be escaped using a \. For example, May 18, 1994 USD:3-22 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell ls `echo "$1"` is equivalent to ls $1 Command substitution occurs in all contexts where parameter sub- stitution occurs (including here documents) and the treatment of the resulting text is the same in both cases. This mechanism allows string processing commands to be used within shell proce- dures. An example of such a command is basename which removes a specified suffix from a string. For example, basename main.c .c will print the string main. Its use is illustrated by the fol- lowing fragment from a cc command. case $A in *.c) B=`basename $A .c` esac that sets B to the part of $A with the suffix .c stripped. Here are some composite examples. o for i in `ls -t`; do The variable i is set to the names of files in time order, most recent first. o set `date`; echo $6 $2 $3, $4 will print, e.g., 1977 Nov 1, 23:59:59 3.4 Evaluation and quoting The shell is a macro processor that provides parameter substitu- tion, command substitution and file name generation for the argu- ments to commands. This section discusses the order in which these evaluations occur and the effects of the various quoting mechanisms. Commands are parsed initially according to the grammar given in appendix A. Before a command is executed the following substitu- tions occur. o parameter substitution, e.g. $user o command substitution, e.g. `pwd` Only one evaluation occurs so that if, for example, the value of the variable X is the string $y then May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-23 echo $X will echo $y. o blank interpretation Following the above substitutions the resulting charac- ters are broken into non-blank words (blank interpreta- tion). For this purpose `blanks' are the characters of the string $IFS. By default, this string consists of blank, tab and newline. The null string is not regarded as a word unless it is quoted. For example, echo '' will pass on the null string as the first argument to echo, whereas echo $null will call echo with no arguments if the variable null is not set or set to the null string. o file name generation Each word is then scanned for the file pattern charac- ters *, ? and [] and an alphabetical list of file names is generated to replace the word. Each such file name is a separate argument. The evaluations just described also occur in the list of words associated with a for loop. Only substitution occurs in the word used for a case branch. As well as the quoting mechanisms described earlier using \ and '' a third quoting mechanism is provided using double quotes. Within double quotes parameter and command substitution occurs but file name generation and the interpretation of blanks does not. The following characters have a special meaning within dou- ble quotes and may be quoted using \. $ parameter substitution ` command substitution " ends the quoted string \ quotes the special characters $ ` " \ For example, echo "$x" will pass the value of the variable x as a single argument to echo. Similarly, May 18, 1994 USD:3-24 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell echo "$*" will pass the positional parameters as a single argument and is equivalent to echo "$1 $2 " The notation $@ is the same as $* except when it is quoted. echo "$@" will pass the positional parameters, unevaluated, to echo and is equivalent to echo "$1" "$2" The following table gives, for each quoting mechanism, the shell metacharacters that are evaluated. metacharacter \ $ * ` " ' ' n n n n n t ` y n n t n n " y y n y t n t terminator y interpreted n not interpreted Figure 2. Quoting mechanisms In cases where more than one evaluation of a string is required the built-in command eval may be used. For example, if the vari- able X has the value $y, and if y has the value pqr then eval echo $X will echo the string pqr. In general the eval command evaluates its arguments (as do all commands) and treats the result as input to the shell. The input is read and the resulting command(s) executed. For example, wg=\'eval whogrep\' $wg fred is equivalent to whogrep fred In this example, eval is required since there is no May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-25 interpretation of metacharacters, such as , following substitu- tion. 3.5 Error handling The treatment of errors detected by the shell depends on the type of error and on whether the shell is being used interactively. An interactive shell is one whose input and output are connected to a terminal (as determined by gtty (2)). A shell invoked with the -i flag is also interactive. Execution of a command (see also 3.7) may fail for any of the following reasons. o Input output redirection may fail. For example, if a file does not exist or cannot be created. o The command itself does not exist or cannot be executed. o The command terminates abnormally, for example, with a "bus error" or "memory fault". See Figure 2 below for a complete list of UNIX signals. o The command terminates normally but returns a non-zero exit status. In all of these cases the shell will go on to execute the next command. Except for the last case an error message will be printed by the shell. All remaining errors cause the shell to exit from a command procedure. An interactive shell will return to read another command from the terminal. Such errors include the following. o Syntax errors. e.g., if then done o A signal such as interrupt. The shell waits for the current command, if any, to finish execution and then either exits or returns to the terminal. o Failure of any of the built-in commands such as cd. The shell flag -e causes the shell to terminate if any error is detected. May 18, 1994 USD:3-26 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell 1 hangup 2 interrupt 3* quit 4* illegal instruction 5* trace trap 6* IOT instruction 7* EMT instruction 8* floating point exception 9 kill (cannot be caught or ignored) 10* bus error 11* segmentation violation 12* bad argument to system call 13 write on a pipe with no one to read it 14 alarm clock 15 software termination (from kill (1)) Figure 3. UNIX signals Those signals marked with an asterisk produce a core dump if not caught. However, the shell itself ignores quit which is the only external signal that can cause a dump. The signals in this list of potential interest to shell programs are 1, 2, 3, 14 and 15. 3.6 Fault handling Shell procedures normally terminate when an interrupt is received from the terminal. The trap command is used if some cleaning up is required, such as removing temporary files. For example, trap 'rm /tmp/ps$$; exit' 2 sets a trap for signal 2 (terminal interrupt), and if this signal is received will execute the commands rm /tmp/ps$$; exit exit is another built-in command that terminates execution of a shell procedure. The exit is required; otherwise, after the trap has been taken, the shell will resume executing the procedure at the place where it was interrupted. UNIX signals can be handled in one of three ways. They can be ignored, in which case the signal is never sent to the process. They can be caught, in which case the process must decide what action to take when the signal is received. Lastly, they can be left to cause termination of the process without it having to take any further action. If a signal is being ignored on entry to the shell procedure, for example, by invoking it in the back- ground (see 3.7) then trap commands (and the signal) are ignored. _________________________ Additional signals have been added in Berkeley Unix. See sigvec(2) or signal(3C) for an up-to-date list. May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-27 The use of trap is illustrated by this modified version of the touch command (Figure 4). The cleanup action is to remove the file junk$$. flag= trap 'rm -f junk$$; exit' 1 2 3 15 for i do case $i in -c) flag=N ;; *) if test -f $i then ln $i junk$$; rm junk$$ elif test $flag then echo file \\'$i\\' does not exist else >$i fi esac done Figure 4. The touch command The trap command appears before the creation of the temporary file; otherwise it would be possible for the process to die with- out removing the file. Since there is no signal 0 in UNIX it is used by the shell to indicate the commands to be executed on exit from the shell pro- cedure. A procedure may, itself, elect to ignore signals by specifying the null string as the argument to trap. The following fragment is taken from the nohup command. trap '' 1 2 3 15 which causes hangup, interrupt, quit and kill to be ignored both by the procedure and by invoked commands. Traps may be reset by saying trap 2 3 which resets the traps for signals 2 and 3 to their default val- ues. A list of the current values of traps may be obtained by writing trap The procedure scan (Figure 5) is an example of the use of trap where there is no exit in the trap command. scan takes each directory in the current directory, prompts with its name, and then executes commands typed at the terminal until an end of file or an interrupt is received. Interrupts are ignored while May 18, 1994 USD:3-28 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell executing the requested commands but cause termination when scan is waiting for input. d=`pwd` for i in * do if test -d $d/$i then cd $d/$i while echo "$i:" trap exit 2 read x do trap : 2; eval $x; done fi done Figure 5. The scan command read x is a built-in command that reads one line from the stan- dard input and places the result in the variable x. It returns a non-zero exit status if either an end-of-file is read or an interrupt is received. 3.7 Command execution To run a command (other than a built-in) the shell first creates a new process using the system call fork. The execution environ- ment for the command includes input, output and the states of signals, and is established in the child process before the com- mand is executed. The built-in command exec is used in the rare cases when no fork is required and simply replaces the shell with a new command. For example, a simple version of the nohup com- mand looks like trap \'\' 1 2 3 15 exec $* The trap turns off the signals specified so that they are ignored by subsequently created commands and exec replaces the shell by the command specified. Most forms of input output redirection have already been described. In the following word is only subject to parameter and command substitution. No file name generation or blank interpretation takes place so that, for example, echo >*.c will write its output into a file whose name is *.c. Input out- put specifications are evaluated left to right as they appear in the command. > word The standard output (file descriptor 1) is sent to the file word which is created if it does not already exist. May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-29 word The standard output is sent to file word. If the file exists then output is appended (by seeking to the end); otherwise the file is created. < word The standard input (file descriptor 0) is taken from the file word. word The standard input is taken from the lines of shell input that follow up to but not including a line con- sisting only of word. If word is quoted then no interpretation of the document occurs. If word is not quoted then parameter and command substitution occur and \ is used to quote the characters \ $ ` and the first character of word. In the latter case \newline is ignored (c.f. quoted strings). >& digit The file descriptor digit is duplicated using the system call dup (2) and the result is used as the standard output. <& digit The standard input is duplicated from file descriptor digit. <&- The standard input is closed. >&- The standard output is closed. Any of the above may be preceded by a digit in which case the file descriptor created is that specified by the digit instead of the default 0 or 1. For example, 2>file runs a command with message output (file descriptor 2) directed to file. 2>&1 runs a command with its standard output and message output merged. (Strictly speaking file descriptor 2 is created by duplicating file descriptor 1 but the effect is usually to merge the two streams.) The environment for a command run in the background such as list *.c lpr & is modified in two ways. Firstly, the default standard input for such a command is the empty file /dev/null. This prevents two processes (the shell and the command), which are running in par- allel, from trying to read the same input. Chaos would ensue if this were not the case. For example, ed file & May 18, 1994 USD:3-30 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell would allow both the editor and the shell to read from the same input at the same time. The other modification to the environment of a background command is to turn off the QUIT and INTERRUPT signals so that they are ignored by the command. This allows these signals to be used at the terminal without causing background commands to terminate. For this reason the UNIX convention for a signal is that if it is set to 1 (ignored) then it is never changed even for a short time. Note that the shell command trap has no effect for an ignored signal. 3.8 Invoking the shell The following flags are interpreted by the shell when it is invoked. If the first character of argument zero is a minus, then commands are read from the file .profile. -c string If the -c flag is present then commands are read from string. -s If the -s flag is present or if no arguments remain then commands are read from the standard input. Shell output is written to file descriptor 2. -i If the -i flag is present or if the shell input and output are attached to a terminal (as told by gtty) then this shell is interactive. In this case TERMINATE is ignored (so that kill 0 does not kill an interactive shell) and INTERRUPT is caught and ignored (so that wait is interruptable). In all cases QUIT is ignored by the shell. Acknowledgements The design of the shell is based in part on the original UNIX shell unix command language thompson and the PWB/UNIX shell, pwb shell mashey unix some features having been taken from both. Similarities also exist with the command interpreters of the Cam- bridge Multiple Access System cambridge multiple access system hartley and of CTSS. ctss I would like to thank Dennis Ritchie and John Mashey for many discussions during the design of the shell. I am also grateful to the members of the Computing Science Research Center and to Joe Maranzano for their comments on drafts of this document. $LIST$ May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-31 Appendix A - Grammar May 18, 1994 USD:3-32 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell item: word input-output name = value simple-command: item simple-command item command: simple-command ( command-list ) { command-list } for name do command-list done for name in word do command-list done while command-list do command-list done until command-list do command-list done case word in case-part esac if command-list then command-list else-part fi pipeline: command pipeline command andor: pipeline andor && pipeline andor pipeline command-list: andor command-list ; command-list & command-list ; andor command-list & andor input-output: > file < file word word file: word & digit & - case-part: pattern ) command-list ;; pattern: word pattern word else-part: elif command-list then command-list else-part else command-list empty empty: word: a sequence of non-blank characters name: a sequence of letters, digits or underscores starting with a letter May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-33 digit: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 May 18, 1994 USD:3-34 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell Appendix B - Meta-characters and Reserved Words a) syntactic pipe symbol && `andf' symbol `orf' symbol ; command separator ;; case delimiter & background commands ( ) command grouping < input redirection input from a here document > output creation output append b) patterns * match any character(s) including none ? match any single character [...] match any of the enclosed characters c) substitution ${...}substitute shell variable `...` substitute command output d) quoting \ quote the next character '...' quote the enclosed characters except for ' "..." quote the enclosed characters except for $ ` \ " May 18, 1994 An Introduction to the UNIX Shell USD:3-35 e) reserved words if then else elif fi case in esac for while until do done { } May 18, 1994