I know that one can get the length of an array in bash by doing ${#arrayname[#]}.
My question is: is this just something that I have to memorize, or can this syntax be broken down into understandable parts? For instance, what does the # symbol mean where one would expect to find the index? Why the #?
# at the beginning of a variable reference means to get the length of the variable's value. For a normal variable this means its length in characters. # is the "number" sign, so you can remember this as meaning "the number of things in the variable".
# or * in an array index means to use the whole array, not a specific element, and instead of returning the number of characters, it returns the number of array elements. * is used as a wildcard in many contexts, so this should be easy to remember. Also, $* and $# are used to mean all the arguments to a shell script, so the parallel with all the array elements should be obvious.
You can't just write ${#arrayname} because when you use an array variable without a subscript, it's equivalent to element 0 of the array. So ${#arrayname} is the same as ${#arrayname[0]}, which is the number of characters in the first element of the array.
You should memorize. :) The # usually means number. e.g. the
$# - is the number of arguments
${#str} - length of the string $str
${#arr[#]}" - length (number of elements) of the array arr
${#arr} - the length of the 1st element of the array (like the str above)
Unfortunately the ${parameter#word} or ${parameter##word} has nothing with numbers. (it removes the shortest/longest word from the beginning of the parameter.
And also, the # .... is comment ;)
In general usage of form ${#PARAMETER} returns the length in number of characters and NOT bytes of the parameter's value.
myString="Hello StackOverflow!"
printf "%s\n" "${#myString}"
20
But for arrays, this expansion type has two meanings:
For individual elements, it reports the string length of the element
(as for every "normal" parameter)
For the mass subscripts # and * it
reports the number of set elements in the array
Consider an example over arrays,
myArray=(1 2 3 4 15)
printf "%s\n" "${myArray[#]}" # <-- Gives me list of elements
1
2
3
4
15
printf "%s\n" "${#myArray[#]}" # <-- Gives me number of elements
5
It gets interesting now, the length of the last element 2 can be obtained by doing
printf "%s\n" "${#myArray[4]}"
2
The '#' acts the same way as '*'. Instead of providing a specific index this references the full thing.
The '#' is telling bash you want the length
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/finding-bash-shell-array-length-elements/
Related
str=abcde
echo ${str:0:2} # output: ab
echo ${str::2} # outpub: ab
The code above leads to same result.
As the documentation describes:
This is referred to as Substring Expansion. It expands to up to length characters of the value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset. If parameter is # or *, an indexed array subscripted by # or *, or an associative array name, the results differ as described below. If length is omitted, it expands to the substring of the value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset and extending to the end of the value. length and offset are arithmetic expressions (see Shell Arithmetic).
If offset evaluates to a number less than zero, the value is used as an offset in characters from the end of the value of parameter. If length evaluates to a number less than zero, it is interpreted as an offset in characters from the end of the value of parameter rather than a number of characters, and the expansion is the characters between offset and that result. Note that a negative offset must be separated from the colon by at least one space to avoid being confused with the :- expansion.
There is no description about omitting offset but in fact it can be omitted.
I wonder if there are any documents I haven't noticed.
In the Arithmetic Evaluation section of the manual it is mentioned that a null value is interpreted as 0, and as we know the argument of that parameter expansion is subject to arithmetic evalation.
A shell variable that is null or unset evaluates to 0 when referenced
by name without using the parameter expansion syntax.
A null value evaluates to 0.
This might be the closest reference you can get as to why an empty value evaluates to 0.
However, I still think that allowing empty arguments should still be documented.
When you have a look at man bash you can read:
${parameter:offset}, ${parameter:offset:length} Substring Expansion. Expands to up to length characters of the value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset. If parameter is #, an indexed array subscripted by # or *, or an associative array name, the results differ as described below. If length is omitted, expands to the substring of the value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset and extending to the end of the value. length and offset are arithmetic expressions (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION below).
It must be made clear that it is not possible to omit the offset value. Here, omit implies that also the <colon>-character is missing. From the table below, you see that there is an ambiguity in this case:
offset
omitted offset
length
${parameter:offset:length}
${parameter:length}
omitted length
${parameter:offset}
${parameter}
From a syntactic point of view, you cannot omit length as you can not distinguish whether length or offset is omitted.
It is possible to leave it empty. man bash clearly states that both length and offset are arithmetic expressions and in that section we find.
A null value evaluates to 0.
This entails both unset variables as well as empty expressions:
$ unset v
$ echo $(( v )) $(( ))
0 0
As offset is a arithmetic expression, an empty value will valuate to the same value as $(( )) which is 0.
So the following are all equivalent:
${parameter:0:length} == ${paramter::length}
${parameter:offset:0} == ${parameter:offset:} == ""
${parameter:0:0} == ${parameter::} == ""
Inside the function of a shell script I see something like this
func() {
local x
x=${1:3:1}
...
}
What does x=${1:3:1} mean? I know that $1, $2 and $3 are arguments of the function. So does the above statement mean that x = $1:$2:$3?
This is called parameter expansion in shell.
${PARAMETER:OFFSET:LENGTH}
This one can expand only a part of a parameter's value, given a position to start and maybe a length. If LENGTH is omitted, the parameter will be expanded up to the end of the string. If LENGTH is negative, it's taken as a second offset into the string, counting from the end of the string.
OFFSET and LENGTH can be any arithmetic expression. The OFFSET starts at 0, not at 1.
e.g lets say the parameter is a string,
MYSTRING = "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send"
echo ${MYSTRING:34:13}
The above will give you the following
conservative
as it will count the 33th(index start at 0) character which will start with the character "c" and then count (13 charcter) length .
So in your case $1 is the parameter you pass to your script and then it offsets 3 characters of that and take a string of length 1 and initialize it to x.
Read more here : http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/pe#substring_expansion
It is a GNU shell parameter expansion, part of many that start with ${.
Like ${parameter:-word}, ${parameter:=word}, ${parameter:?word}, ${parameter:+word} and several others.
This one (specific to ksh, bash and zsh): ${parameter:offset:length} extracts lenght characters (optional, if missing, the rest of the string in parameter) starting at offset. With several details described in the bash manual.
${name:offset:length}
Substring Expansion. Expands to up to length characters of the value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset. If parameter is #, an indexed array subscripted by # or *, or an associative array name, the results differ as described below. If length is omitted, expands to the substring of the value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset and extending to the end of the value. length and offset are arithmetic expressions (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION below).
If offset evaluates to a number less than zero, the value is used as an offset in characters from the end of the value of parameter. If length evaluates to a number less than zero, it is interpreted as an offset in characters from the end of the value of parameter rather than a number of characters, and the expansion is the characters between offset and that result. Note that a negative offset must be separated from the colon by at least one space to avoid being confused with the :- expansion.
If parameter is #, the result is length positional parameters beginning at offset. A negative offset is taken relative to one greater than the greatest positional parameter, so an offset of -1 evaluates to the last positional parameter. It is an expansion error if length evaluates to a number less than zero.
If parameter is an indexed array name subscripted by # or *, the result is the length members of the array beginning with ${parameter[offset]}. A negative offset is taken relative to one greater than the maximum index of the specified array. It is an expansion error if length evaluates to a number less than zero.
Substring expansion applied to an associative array produces undefined results.
Substring indexing is zero-based unless the positional parameters are used, in which case the indexing starts at 1 by default. If offset is 0, and the positional parameters are used, $0 is prefixed to the list.
Use the manual page, all information is in there. man bash:
${parameter:offset:length}
Substring Expansion. Expands to up to length characters of the
value of parameter starting at the character specified by off‐
set. If parameter is #, an indexed array subscripted by # or *,
or an associative array name, the results differ as described
below. If length is omitted, expands to the substring of the
value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset
and extending to the end of the value. length and offset are
arithmetic expressions (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION below).
What does x=${1:3:1} mean?
It's substring cut, and in English: using the string in $1, pull 1 character starting at index 3 (where indexes are 0-based). So if $1 === "foobar", then ${1:3:1} === "b".
I know that $1, $2 and $3 are arguments of the function. So does the above statement mean that x = $1:$2:$3?
No, adjacency represents string concatenation: x="$1$2$3" is the result of concatenating the strings in $1, $2, and $3.
Also, it is really helpful if someone can suggest on how do I google search for speacial characters like this? Any standard keywords? I tried searching 'what is ":" in shell scripts' etc.. But the results are random when trying to search for special characters.
bash parameter substitution usually gets you in the ballpark. I know I can't remember all the different syntax ways bash can fiddle with the data, so committing "parameter substitution" to memory pays off. String manipulation happens to be the chapter before parameter substitution.
Try this:
set ABCDEFG
echo ${1:3:1}
It is getting a substring. In general ${} refers to an array variable (in this case array of chars)
I have a question about substrings in Bash, which seem irregular to me. Imagine I have X="Hello World!". Then:
echo ${X:4} # Prints 'o World!'
echo ${X:(-2)} # Prints 'd!'
Why does a positive integer show the whole string except for the specified characters, while a negative characters shows nothing except for the specified characters?
There are 2-ways to offset from end-of-string in bash. The first uses the index in parenthesis as you have:
echo ${X:(-2)} # Prints 'd!'
The second leaves a space after to :
echo ${X: -2} # Prints 'd!'
Both are offset from end-of-string. What is printed is the same for the positive and negative case. Characters are printed from the index to end-of-string. In the negative case, you offset from end-of-string by 2 and then print all remaining characters from that index. (the last 2-chars)
You can prove it to yourself with:
echo ${X: -2:1} # Prints 'd'
Positive indexes are offset from beginning-of-string, negative indexes are offset from end-of-string. In both cases what is printed is the remaining characters in the string unless the number of characters to print is specified following a second colon. (e.g. ${var:index:nchars} )
It works as documented:
${parameter:offset}
${parameter:offset:length}
This is referred to as Substring Expansion. It expands to up to length characters of the value of parameter starting at the character
specified by offset. If parameter is ‘#’, an indexed array subscripted
by ‘#’ or ‘*’, or an associative array name, the results differ as
described below. If length is omitted, it expands to the substring of
the value of parameter starting at the character specified by offset
and extending to the end of the value. length and offset are
arithmetic expressions (see Shell Arithmetic).
If offset evaluates to a number less than zero, the value is used as an offset in characters from the end of the value of parameter.
[..]
(emphasis mine)
So a negative offset is equivalent to its positive offset as below:
pos_offset = len_of_str + neg_offset
i.e. in your example, ${X:(-2)} should behaves as ${X:10} (str_len = 10 and neg_offset = -2, so pos_offset = 10). So both print the whole string starting from the specified index.
argument_number=$#
for ((i = 2; i <= $argument_number; i++))
do
echo ${lower[$i]]}
done
I want to take argument value into array as index number for example if my second argumnet is 15 want to achive lower[15] but it gives lower[2] how can I do ,is there any suggestion,help
If I understand you correctly, the indices into array ${lower[#]} are given by command-line arguments; in this case, you can simply use:
shift # skip the 1st argument
for index; do # this loops over all command-line arguments; same as: for index in "$#"; do
echo "${lower[index]}"
done
Note:
I've double-quoted ${lower[index]} so as to protect the value from unwanted interpretation by the shell - unless you specifically want the shell to perform word-splitting and globbing on a variable value, you should double-quote all your variable references.
Array subscripts in Bash are evaluated in arithmetic context, which is why variable index can be referenced without the usual $ prefix.
how to pass 2d array to function in shell script ?
i need to pass matrix to function but it do not work
tr(){
matrix="$3"
num_rows="$1"
num_columns="$2"
f1="%$((${#num_rows}+1))s"
f2=" %9s"
for ((i=1;i<=num_rows;i++)) do
for ((j=1;j<=num_columns;j++)) do
echo -ne "${matrix[$i,$j]}\t"
done
echo -e "\n"
done
tr $rows $columns $x
Use an associative array:
declare -A matrix
Then things like matrix[6,7]=42 will work because "6,7" ist just a string, and associative arrays accept strings as indices. You might as well write things like
matrix[one,two]=three
matrix[yet,another,dimension]="Perry Rhodan"
You can just write any string between [ and ]. Here is a complete example for how to use it.
#!/bin/bash
#
# Example for a function that accepts the name of an associative array ...
# ... and does some work on the array entries, e.g. compute their sum
# We assume that all *values* of the array are integers - no error check
sum() {
local s=0 # we don't want to interfere with any other s
declare -n local var="$1" # now var references the variable named in $1
for value in "${var[#]}" # value runs through all values of the array
do
let s+="$value"
done
echo sum is $s
}
declare -A m # now m is an associative array, accepting any kind of index
m[0,0]=4 # this looks like 2-dimensional indexing, but is is not
m[2,3]=5 # m will accept any reasonable string as an array index
m[678]=6 # m does not care about the number of commas between numbers
m[foo]=7 # m does not even care about the indices being numbers at all
sum m
As you see, the matrix m not really has 2 dimensions. It just takes any string as an index, as long as it does not contains certain shell syntax characters, and comma is allowed in the string.
Please note the reference declare -n ... - this allows simple access to the matrix from within the function and, most important, without knowing the name of the matrix. Thus you can call that function for several matrices with different names.
The keyword local is important. It means that, upon return, var is unset automatically. Otherwise you will have a reference "var" to an associative array. If you ever want to use var later, it will be hard to use it because you cannot use it as anything else but an associative array. And if you try to get rid of it by "unset var", bash will kindly remember that var refers to m, and delete your matrix m instead. In general, make variables in functions be local wherever possible. It even allows me to re-use a name. For example, using "s" as a variable name inside a function may appear dangerous because it might change the value of a global variable "s". But it doesn't - by declaring it local, the function has its own private variable s, and any s that might already exist is untouched.
Just as a demonstration: If you want to see the array indices in the loop, do this:
sum() {
local s=0 # we don't want to interfere with any other s
declare -n local var="$1" # now var references the variable named in $1
for i in "${!var[#]}" # !var means that we run through all indices
do # we really need a reference here because ...
let s+=${var["$i"]} # ... indirections like ${!$1[$i]} won't work
done
echo sum is $s
}