bash script case statement needs to detect specific arguments - bash

I have to write this script where it will display each entry that is entered in on its own line and separate each line with "*****". I've already got that down for the most part but now I need it to detect when the word "TestError" and/or "now" is entered in as an argument. The way it is setup right now it will detect those words correctly if they are the first argument on the line, I'm just not sure how to set it up where it will detect the word regardless of which argument it is on the line. Also I need help with the *? case where I need it to say "Do not know what to do with " for every other argument that is not "TestError" or "now", at the moment it will do it for the first argument but not the rest.
Would it work the way it is right now? Or would I have to use only the *? and * cases and just put an if/then/else/fi statement in the *? case in order to find the "TestError" "now" and any other argument.
# template.sh
function usage
{
echo "usage: $0 arguments ..."
if [ $# -eq 1 ]
then echo "ERROR: $1"
fi
}
# Script starts after this line.
case $1 in
TestError)
usage $*
;;
now)
time=$(date +%X)
echo "It is now $time"
;;
*?)
echo "My Name"
date
echo
usage
printf "%s\n*****\n" "Do not know what to do with " "$#"
;;
*)
usage
;;
esac

You'll need to loop over the arguments, executing the case statement for each one.
for arg in "$#"; do
case $arg in
TestError)
usage $*
;;
now)
time=$(date +%X)
echo "It is now $time"
;;
*?)
echo "My Name"
date
echo
usage
printf "%s\n*****\n" "Do not know what to do with " "$#"
;;
*)
usage
;;
esac
done
* and *? will match the same strings. Did you mean to match the ? literally (*\?)?

Related

How to pattern match a script argument in Linux bash

Basically, I have to create a bash script that analyzez the arguments of the script and if it's only one, proceeds to pattern match it. If it starts with a number, it says so, if it starts with a letter, it says so and if neither, it says the argument is a string. If you didn't provide an argument, it says you need 1, or if you provided 2 or more. Everything works, apart from the pattern matching itself. I always get the default case. What's wrong with it?
I gotta use case :( .
case $# in
1) case $1 in
/^?[0-9][a-zA-z]*$/) echo "Argument starts with number";;
/^?[a-zA-z][a-zA-z]*$/) echo "Argument starts with letter";;
*) echo "Argument is a string";;
esac;;
0) echo -n "You can't use 0 arguments"
exit 1;;
*) echo -n "You can't use 2 or more arguments"
exit 1;;
esac
exit 0
EDIT: typing this in terminal gives me the default case: l#ubuntu:~/Documents$ ./e4_G_L.sh contor - maybe I wrote the argument wrong and the pattern matching works just fine?
As pointed out in the comments, case only supports globs (also known as wildcards). To check regular expression as in your script you could use [[ … =~ … ]] but that would be overkill. Since you only want to check the first letter, globs are sufficient.
Also, I would rephrase the warning message. Tell the user what to do, not just “You messed up. Good luck guessing on your next try.”.
if [ $# != 1 ]; then
echo "Expected 1 argument but found $#."
exit 1
fi
case "$1" in
[0-9]*) echo "Argument starts with number" ;;
[a-zA-Z]*) echo "Argument starts with letter" ;;
*) echo "Argument is a string";;
esac
Using bash extended patterns:
shopt -s extglob
case $# in
0) echo "You can't use 0 arguments"
exit 1
;;
1) case $1 in
[0-9]+([[:alpha:]]) ) echo "A number followed by letters" ;;
+([[:alpha:]]) ) echo "Only letters" ;;
*) echo "Something else" ;;
esac
;;
*) echo "You can't use 2 or more arguments"
exit 1
;;
esac
Thanks to everybody who bothered to help this lost soul :). It's a task for my Uni so no need for complex hints. The teacher knows what this is about so keeping it short. Ended up using the first answer.

Bash: How to implement sequential checking of multiple case-switch blocks?

I want the first case-switch block to evaluate the 1st AND 3rd positional arguments. If the 1st provided positional arg is not defined, then I want to move to the next case-switch block to evaluate ONLY the 3rd positional arg.
my code looks like this:
case "$1" in
X) case "$3" in
-d) if [[ "$4" =~ ^[A-Z]+-[0-9]+$ ]]; then
CreateMarketDir;
SymlinkMarketData;
else
CreateMarketDir;
fi;;
esac
*) echo "Exiting the first Case Block"
exit;;
esac
case "$3" in
-c) if [[ "$4" =~ ^[A-Z]+-[0-9]+$ ]]; then
CreateDCDir;
SymlinkDCData;
else
CreateDCDir;
fi;;
*) echo "Please use a valid argument"
exit;;
esac
However, only the first case-switch block works - for example, the following runs OK:
./script.sh X foo -d
But when I try to run with the following args:
./script.sh foo bar -c
I get this output:
Please use a valid argument
What I assume is that if the 1st positional arg is not X, then the script should check the next case-switch block and evaluate the 3rd positional arg. But apparently, this is not the case.
How should I implement the sequential checking of multiple case-switch blocks?
Thank you
As correctly pointed out by #Barmar, the issue was that the first esac was missing ;;
Also, if the script is supposed to go through separate Case-Switch blocks sequentially, then the exit;; must be removed from the first Case block, otherwise the whole script will be stopped

Validate bash script arguments

I am trying to do something like this to make a script to perform backups if they have failed. I am taking in the environment as argument to the script.
The one thing i am unsure on how to do is that i want to verify $1 to only include some predefined values. The predefined values should be something like tst, prd, qa, rpt. Anyone?
#!/bin/bash
ENVIRONMENT=$1
BACKUPDATE=$(date +"%d_%m_%Y")
BACKUPFILE="$ENVIRONMENT".backup."$BACKUPDATE".tar.gz
if [ $1 == "" ]
then
echo "No environment specified"
exit
elif [ -f "$BACKUPFILE" ]; then
echo "The file '$BACKUPFILE' exists."
else
echo "The file '$BACKUPFILE' in not found."
exec touch "$BACKUPFILE"
fi
You can use case:
case "$1" in
tst) echo "Backing up Test style" ;;
prd)
echo "Production backup"
/etc/init.d/myservice stop
tar czf ...
/etc/init.d/myservice start
;;
qa) echo "Quality skipped" ;;
rpt)
echo "Different type of backup"
echo "This could be another processing"
...
;;
*)
echo "Unknown backup type"
exit 2
;;
esac
Note the double ;; to end each case, and the convenient use of pattern matching.
Edit: following your comment and #CharlesDuffy suggestion, if you want to have all valid options in an array and test your value against any of them (hence having the same piece of code for all valid values), you can use an associative array:
declare -A valids=(["tst"]=1 ["prd"]=1 ["qa"]=1 ["rpt"]=1)
if [[ -z ${valids[$1]} ]] ; then
echo "Invalid parameter value"
# Any other processing here ...
exit 1
fi
# Here your parameter is valid, proceed with processing ...
This works by having a value (here 1 but it could be anything else in that case) assigned to every valid parameter. So any invalid parameter will be null and the -z test will trigger.
Credits go to him.
Depending on how many different values you have, what about a case statement? It even allows for globbing.
case $1 in
(John) printf "Likes Yoko\n";;
(Paul) printf "Likes to write songs\n";;
(George) printf "Harrison\n";;
(Ringo) printf "Da drumma\n";;
(*) printf "Management, perhaps?\n";;
esac
On another note, if you can you should avoid unportable bashisms like the [[ test operator (and use [ if you can, e.g. if [ "$1" = "John" ]; then ...; fi.)

Best way to parse arguments in bash script

So I've been reading around about getopts, getopt, etc. but I haven't found an exact solution to my problem.
The basic idea of the usage of my script is:
./program [-u] [-s] [-d] <TEXT>
Except TEXT is not required if -d is passed. Note that TEXT is usually a paragraph of text.
My main problem is that once getopts finishing parsing the flags, I have no way of knowing the position of the TEXT parameter. I could just assume that TEXT is the last argument, however, if a user messes up and does something like:
./program -u "sentence 1" "sentence 2"
then the program will not realize that the usage is incorrect.
The closest I've come is using getopt and IFS by doing
ARGS=$(getopt usd: $*)
IFS=' ' read -a array <<< "$ARGS"
The only problem is that TEXT might be a long paragraph of text and this method splits every word of text because of the spaces.
I'm thinking my best bet is to use a regular expression to ensure the usage is correctly formed and then extract the arguments with getopts, but it would be nice if there was a simpler solution
It's quite simple with getopts:
#!/bin/bash
u_set=0
s_set=0
d_set=0
while getopts usd OPT; do
case "$OPT" in
u) u_set=1;;
s) s_set=1;;
d) d_set=1;;
*) # getopts produces error
exit 1;;
esac
done
if ((!d_set && OPTIND>$#)); then
echo You must provide text or use -d >>/dev/stderr
exit 1
fi
# The easiest way to get rid of the processed options:
shift $((OPTIND-1))
# This will run all of the remaining arguments together with spaces between them:
TEXT="$*"
This is what I typically do:
local badflag=""
local aflag=""
local bflag=""
local cflag=""
local dflag=""
while [[ "$1" == -* ]]; do
case $1 in
-a)
aflag="-a"
;;
-b)
bflag="-b"
;;
-c)
cflag="-c"
;;
-d)
dflag="-d"
;;
*)
badflag=$1
;;
esac
shift
done
if [ "$badflag" != "" ]; do
echo "ERROR CONDITION"
fi
if [ "$1" == "" ] && [ "$dflag" == "" ]; do
echo "ERROR CONDITION"
fi
local remaining_text=$#

Bash case statement

I'm trying to learn case as I was to write a fully functional script.
I'm starting off with the below
#!/bin/sh
case $# in
-h|--help)
echo "You have selected Help"
;;
-B|-b)
echo "You have selected B"
;;
-C|-c)
echo "You have selected C"
;;
*)
echo "Valid Choices are A,B,C"
exit 1
;;
esac
I want to use two of these options:
./getopts.sh -h -c
But i get this result
Valid Choices are A,B,C
Please can you help out and let me know what I'm doing wrong?
I want to build a script that will do something if you enter one option but do multiple things if you enter multiple.
Also how would i parse $1 to this script as surley which ever option i enter first (-h) will be $1 ??
Thanks!
Try this
#!/bin/sh
usage() {
echo `basename $0`: ERROR: $* 1>&2
echo usage: `basename $0` '[-a] [-b] [-c]
[file ...]' 1>&2
exit 1
}
while :
do
case "$1" in
-a|-A) echo you picked A;;
-b|-B) echo you picked B;;
-c|-C) echo you picked C;;
-*) usage "bad argument $1";;
*) break;;
esac
shift
done
Using getopt or getopts is the better solution. But to answer your immediate question, $# is all of your arguments, so -h -c, which doesn't match any of the single-argument patterns in your case statement. You would still need to iterate over your arguments like so
for arg in "$#"; do
case $arg in
....
esac
done
to parse the positional arguments like ... $1 , just use $1 in the case stmt and then at the end ... use shift to pust the 2nd arg to $1 and likewise .
also i would put the case stmt in a while loop or better a fxn so that i can run it twice for the two options or the number of options ..........
$# will let you know how many options/arguments were there .

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