Get the name of the caller script in bash script - bash

Let's assume I have 3 shell scripts:
script_1.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh
script_2.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh
the problem is that in script_3.sh I want to know the name of the caller script.
so that I can respond differently to each caller I support
please don't assume I'm asking about $0 cause $0 will echo script_3 every time no matter who is the caller
here is an example input with expected output
./script_1.sh should echo script_1
./script_2.sh should echo script_2
./script_3.sh should echo user_name or root or anything to distinguish between the 3 cases?
Is that possible? and if possible, how can it be done?
this is going to be added to a rm modified script... so when I call rm it do something and when git or any other CLI tool use rm it is not affected by the modification

Based on #user3100381's answer, here's a much simpler command to get the same thing which I believe should be fairly portable:
PARENT_COMMAND=$(ps -o comm= $PPID)
Replace comm= with args= to get the full command line (command + arguments). The = alone is used to suppress the headers.
See: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009604499/utilities/ps.html

In case you are sourceing instead of calling/executing the script there is no new process forked and thus the solutions with ps won't work reliably.
Use bash built-in caller in that case.
$ cat h.sh
#! /bin/bash
function warn_me() {
echo "$#"
caller
}
$
$ cat g.sh
#!/bin/bash
source h.sh
warn_me "Error: You did not do something"
$
$ . g.sh
Error: You did not do something
g.sh
$
Source

The $PPID variable holds the parent process ID. So you could parse the output from ps to get the command.
#!/bin/bash
PARENT_COMMAND=$(ps $PPID | tail -n 1 | awk "{print \$5}")

Based on #J.L.answer, with more in depth explanations, that works for linux :
cat /proc/$PPID/comm
gives you the name of the command of the parent pid
If you prefer the command with all options, then :
cat /proc/$PPID/cmdline
explanations :
$PPID is defined by the shell, it's the pid of the parent processes
in /proc/, you have some dirs with the pid of each process (linux). Then, if you cat /proc/$PPID/comm, you echo the command name of the PID
Check man proc

Couple of useful files things kept in /proc/$PPID here
/proc/*some_process_id*/exe A symlink to the last executed command under *some_process_id*
/proc/*some_process_id*/cmdline A file containing the last executed command under *some_process_id* and null-byte separated arguments
So a slight simplification.
sed 's/\x0/ /g' "/proc/$PPID/cmdline"

If you have /proc:
$(cat /proc/$PPID/comm)

Declare this:
PARENT_NAME=`ps -ocomm --no-header $PPID`
Thus you'll get a nice variable $PARENT_NAME that holds the parent's name.

You can simply use the command below to avoid calling cut/awk/sed:
ps --no-headers -o command $PPID
If you only want the parent and none of the subsequent processes, you can use:
ps --no-headers -o command $PPID | cut -d' ' -f1

You could pass in a variable to script_3.sh to determine how to respond...
script_1.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh script1
script_2.sh
#!/bin/bash
./script_3.sh script2
script_3.sh
#!/bin/bash
if [ $1 == 'script1' ] ; then
echo "we were called from script1!"
elsif [ $1 == 'script2' ] ; then
echo "we were called from script2!"
fi

Related

How can i find the process name by the shell script that invokes it?

Is there a way, I can find the process name of bash script by the shell script that was used to invoke it? or can I set process name of bash script to something such as
-myprocess
(I have looked into argv[0], but I am not clear about it)
so when I use
ps -ef | grep -c '[M]yprocess'
I get only all the instances of myprocess?
To obtain the command name of the current script that is running, use:
ps -q $$ -o comm=
To get process information on all running scripts that have the same name as the current script, use:
ps -C "$(ps -q $$ -o comm=)"
To find just the process IDs of all scripts currently being run that have the same name as the current script, use:
pgrep "$(ps -q $$ -o comm=)"
How it works
$$ is the process ID of the script that is being run.
The option -q $$ tells ps to report on only process ID $$.
The option -o comm= tells ps to omit headers and to skip the usual output and instead print just the command name.
The parent process id can be obtained from $PPID on bash and ksh. We can read the fields from ps into an array.
For bash you can try this. The problem with ps is that many options are non-standard, so I have kept that as generic as possible:
#!/bin/bash
while read -a fields
do
if [[ ${fields[0]} == $PPID ]]
then
echo "Shell: ${fields[3]}"
echo "Command: ${fields[4]}"
fi
done < <(ps -p $PPID)
You have tagged bash and ksh, but they have different syntax rules. To read into an array bash uses -a but ksh uses -A, So for korn shell you would need to change the read line (and the #! line):
while read -A fields
Not sure what you mean by that, but let's go with an example script b.sh.
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
echo "My name is $0, and I am running under $SHELL as the shell."
Running the script will give you:
$ bash b.sh
My name is b.sh, and I am running under /usr/local/bin/bash as the shell.
For more check this answer: HOWTO: Detect bash from shell script

How can a ksh script determine the full path to itself, when sourced from another?

How can a script determine it's path when it is sourced by ksh? i.e.
$ ksh ". foo.sh"
I've seen very nice ways of doing this in BASH posted on stackoverflow and elsewhere but haven't yet found a ksh method.
Using "$0" doesn't work. This simply refers to "ksh".
Update: I've tried using the "history" command but that isn't aware of the history outside the current script.
$ cat k.ksh
#!/bin/ksh
. j.ksh
$ cat j.ksh
#!/bin/ksh
a=$(history | tail -1)
echo $a
$ ./k.ksh
270 ./k.ksh
I would want it echo "* ./j.ksh".
If it's the AT&T ksh93, this information is stored in the .sh namespace, in the variable .sh.file.
Example
sourced.sh:
(
echo "Sourced: ${.sh.file}"
)
Invocation:
$ ksh -c '. ./sourced.sh'
Result:
Sourced: /var/tmp/sourced.sh
The .sh.file variable is distinct from $0. While $0 can be ksh or /usr/bin/ksh, or the name of the currently running script, .sh.file will always refer to the file for the current scope.
In an interactive shell, this variable won't even exist:
$ echo ${.sh.file:?}
-ksh: .sh.file: parameter not set
I believe the only portable solution is to override the source command:
source() {
sourced=$1
. "$1"
}
And then use source instead of . (the script name will be in $sourced).
The difference of course between sourcing and forking is that sourcing results in the invoked script being executed within the calling process. Henk showed an elegant solution in ksh93, but if, like me, you're stuck with ksh88 then you need an alternative. I'd rather not change the default ksh method of sourcing by using C-shell syntax, and at work it would be against our coding standards, so creating and using a source() function would be unworkable for me. ps, $0 and $_ are unreliable, so here's an alternative:
$ cat b.sh ; cat c.sh ; ./b.sh
#!/bin/ksh
export SCRIPT=c.sh
. $SCRIPT
echo "PPID: $$"
echo "FORKING c.sh"
./c.sh
If we set the invoked script in a variable, and source it using the variable, that variable will be available to the invoked script, since they are in the same process space.
#!/bin/ksh
arguments=$_
pid=$$
echo "PID:$pid"
command=`ps -o args -p $pid | tail -1`
echo "COMMAND (from ps -o args of the PID): $command"
echo "COMMAND (from c.sh's \$_ ) : $arguments"
echo "\$SCRIPT variable: $SCRIPT"
echo dirname: `dirname $0`
echo ; echo
Output is as follows:
PID:21665
COMMAND (from ps -o args of the PID): /bin/ksh ./b.sh
COMMAND (from c.sh's $_ ) : SCRIPT=c.sh
$SCRIPT variable: c.sh
dirname: .
PPID: 21665
FORKING c.sh
PID:21669
COMMAND (from ps -o args of the PID): /bin/ksh ./c.sh
COMMAND (from c.sh's $_ ) : ./c.sh
$SCRIPT variable: c.sh
dirname: .
So when we set the SCRIPT variable in the caller script, the variable is either accessible from the sourced script's operands, or, in the case of a forked process, the variable along with all other environment variables of the parent process are copied for the child process. In either case, the SCRIPT variable can contain your command and arguments, and will be accessible in the case of both sourcing and forking.
You should find it as last command in the history.

How to invoke bash, run commands inside the new shell, and then give control back to user?

This must either be really simple or really complex, but I couldn't find anything about it... I am trying to open a new bash instance, then run a few commands inside it, and give the control back to the user inside that same instance.
I tried:
$ bash -lic "some_command"
but this executes some_command inside the new instance, then closes it. I want it to stay open.
One more detail which might affect answers: if I can get this to work I will use it in my .bashrc as alias(es), so bonus points for an alias implementation!
bash --rcfile <(echo '. ~/.bashrc; some_command')
dispenses the creation of temporary files. Question on other sites:
https://serverfault.com/questions/368054/run-an-interactive-bash-subshell-with-initial-commands-without-returning-to-the
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/123103/how-to-keep-bash-running-after-command-execution
This is a late answer, but I had the exact same problem and Google sent me to this page, so for completeness here is how I got around the problem.
As far as I can tell, bash does not have an option to do what the original poster wanted to do. The -c option will always return after the commands have been executed.
Broken solution: The simplest and obvious attempt around this is:
bash -c 'XXXX ; bash'
This partly works (albeit with an extra sub-shell layer). However, the problem is that while a sub-shell will inherit the exported environment variables, aliases and functions are not inherited. So this might work for some things but isn't a general solution.
Better: The way around this is to dynamically create a startup file and call bash with this new initialization file, making sure that your new init file calls your regular ~/.bashrc if necessary.
# Create a temporary file
TMPFILE=$(mktemp)
# Add stuff to the temporary file
echo "source ~/.bashrc" > $TMPFILE
echo "<other commands>" >> $TMPFILE
echo "rm -f $TMPFILE" >> $TMPFILE
# Start the new bash shell
bash --rcfile $TMPFILE
The nice thing is that the temporary init file will delete itself as soon as it is used, reducing the risk that it is not cleaned up correctly.
Note: I'm not sure if /etc/bashrc is usually called as part of a normal non-login shell. If so you might want to source /etc/bashrc as well as your ~/.bashrc.
You can pass --rcfile to Bash to cause it to read a file of your choice. This file will be read instead of your .bashrc. (If that's a problem, source ~/.bashrc from the other script.)
Edit: So a function to start a new shell with the stuff from ~/.more.sh would look something like:
more() { bash --rcfile ~/.more.sh ; }
... and in .more.sh you would have the commands you want to execute when the shell starts. (I suppose it would be elegant to avoid a separate startup file -- you cannot use standard input because then the shell will not be interactive, but you could create a startup file from a here document in a temporary location, then read it.)
bash -c '<some command> ; exec /bin/bash'
will avoid additional shell sublayer
You can get the functionality you want by sourcing the script instead of running it. eg:
$cat script
cmd1
cmd2
$ . script
$ at this point cmd1 and cmd2 have been run inside this shell
Append to ~/.bashrc a section like this:
if [ "$subshell" = 'true' ]
then
# commands to execute only on a subshell
date
fi
alias sub='subshell=true bash'
Then you can start the subshell with sub.
The accepted answer is really helpful! Just to add that process substitution (i.e., <(COMMAND)) is not supported in some shells (e.g., dash).
In my case, I was trying to create a custom action (basically a one-line shell script) in Thunar file manager to start a shell and activate the selected Python virtual environment. My first attempt was:
urxvt -e bash --rcfile <(echo ". $HOME/.bashrc; . %f/bin/activate;")
where %f is the path to the virtual environment handled by Thunar.
I got an error (by running Thunar from command line):
/bin/sh: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
Then I realized that my sh (essentially dash) does not support process substitution.
My solution was to invoke bash at the top level to interpret the process substitution, at the expense of an extra level of shell:
bash -c 'urxvt -e bash --rcfile <(echo "source $HOME/.bashrc; source %f/bin/activate;")'
Alternatively, I tried to use here-document for dash but with no success. Something like:
echo -e " <<EOF\n. $HOME/.bashrc; . %f/bin/activate;\nEOF\n" | xargs -0 urxvt -e bash --rcfile
P.S.: I do not have enough reputation to post comments, moderators please feel free to move it to comments or remove it if not helpful with this question.
With accordance with the answer by daveraja, here is a bash script which will solve the purpose.
Consider a situation if you are using C-shell and you want to execute a command
without leaving the C-shell context/window as follows,
Command to be executed: Search exact word 'Testing' in current directory recursively only in *.h, *.c files
grep -nrs --color -w --include="*.{h,c}" Testing ./
Solution 1: Enter into bash from C-shell and execute the command
bash
grep -nrs --color -w --include="*.{h,c}" Testing ./
exit
Solution 2: Write the intended command into a text file and execute it using bash
echo 'grep -nrs --color -w --include="*.{h,c}" Testing ./' > tmp_file.txt
bash tmp_file.txt
Solution 3: Run command on the same line using bash
bash -c 'grep -nrs --color -w --include="*.{h,c}" Testing ./'
Solution 4: Create a sciprt (one-time) and use it for all future commands
alias ebash './execute_command_on_bash.sh'
ebash grep -nrs --color -w --include="*.{h,c}" Testing ./
The script is as follows,
#!/bin/bash
# =========================================================================
# References:
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/13343457/5409274
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/26733366/5409274
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/2853811/5409274
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/2853811/5409274
# https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/other-%2Anix-55/how-can-i-run-a-command-on-another-shell-without-changing-the-current-shell-794580/
# https://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/internalvariables.html
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/4277753/5409274
# =========================================================================
# Enable following line to see the script commands
# getting printing along with their execution. This will help for debugging.
#set -o verbose
E_BADARGS=85
if [ ! -n "$1" ]
then
echo "Usage: `basename $0` grep -nrs --color -w --include=\"*.{h,c}\" Testing ."
echo "Usage: `basename $0` find . -name \"*.txt\""
exit $E_BADARGS
fi
# Create a temporary file
TMPFILE=$(mktemp)
# Add stuff to the temporary file
#echo "echo Hello World...." >> $TMPFILE
#initialize the variable that will contain the whole argument string
argList=""
#iterate on each argument
for arg in "$#"
do
#if an argument contains a white space, enclose it in double quotes and append to the list
#otherwise simply append the argument to the list
if echo $arg | grep -q " "; then
argList="$argList \"$arg\""
else
argList="$argList $arg"
fi
done
#remove a possible trailing space at the beginning of the list
argList=$(echo $argList | sed 's/^ *//')
# Echoing the command to be executed to tmp file
echo "$argList" >> $TMPFILE
# Note: This should be your last command
# Important last command which deletes the tmp file
last_command="rm -f $TMPFILE"
echo "$last_command" >> $TMPFILE
#echo "---------------------------------------------"
#echo "TMPFILE is $TMPFILE as follows"
#cat $TMPFILE
#echo "---------------------------------------------"
check_for_last_line=$(tail -n 1 $TMPFILE | grep -o "$last_command")
#echo $check_for_last_line
#if tail -n 1 $TMPFILE | grep -o "$last_command"
if [ "$check_for_last_line" == "$last_command" ]
then
#echo "Okay..."
bash $TMPFILE
exit 0
else
echo "Something is wrong"
echo "Last command in your tmp file should be removing itself"
echo "Aborting the process"
exit 1
fi
$ bash --init-file <(echo 'some_command')
$ bash --rcfile <(echo 'some_command')
In case you can't or don't want to use process substitution:
$ cat script
some_command
$ bash --init-file script
Another way:
$ bash -c 'some_command; exec bash'
$ sh -c 'some_command; exec sh'
sh-only way (dash, busybox):
$ ENV=script sh
Here is yet another (working) variant:
This opens a new gnome terminal, then in the new terminal it runs bash. The user's rc file is read first, then a command ls -la is sent for execution to the new shell before it turns interactive.
The last echo adds an extra newline that is needed to finish execution.
gnome-terminal -- bash -c 'bash --rcfile <( cat ~/.bashrc; echo ls -la ; echo)'
I also find it useful sometimes to decorate the terminal, e.g. with colorfor better orientation.
gnome-terminal --profile green -- bash -c 'bash --rcfile <( cat ~/.bashrc; echo ls -la ; echo)'

How to determine the current interactive shell that I'm in (command-line)

How can I determine the current shell I am working on?
Would the output of the ps command alone be sufficient?
How can this be done in different flavors of Unix?
There are three approaches to finding the name of the current shell's executable:
Please note that all three approaches can be fooled if the executable of the shell is /bin/sh, but it's really a renamed bash, for example (which frequently happens).
Thus your second question of whether ps output will do is answered with "not always".
echo $0 - will print the program name... which in the case of the shell is the actual shell.
ps -ef | grep $$ | grep -v grep - this will look for the current process ID in the list of running processes. Since the current process is the shell, it will be included.
This is not 100% reliable, as you might have other processes whose ps listing includes the same number as shell's process ID, especially if that ID is a small number (for example, if the shell's PID is "5", you may find processes called "java5" or "perl5" in the same grep output!). This is the second problem with the "ps" approach, on top of not being able to rely on the shell name.
echo $SHELL - The path to the current shell is stored as the SHELL variable for any shell. The caveat for this one is that if you launch a shell explicitly as a subprocess (for example, it's not your login shell), you will get your login shell's value instead. If that's a possibility, use the ps or $0 approach.
If, however, the executable doesn't match your actual shell (e.g. /bin/sh is actually bash or ksh), you need heuristics. Here are some environmental variables specific to various shells:
$version is set on tcsh
$BASH is set on bash
$shell (lowercase) is set to actual shell name in csh or tcsh
$ZSH_NAME is set on zsh
ksh has $PS3 and $PS4 set, whereas the normal Bourne shell (sh) only has $PS1 and $PS2 set. This generally seems like the hardest to distinguish - the only difference in the entire set of environment variables between sh and ksh we have installed on Solaris boxen is $ERRNO, $FCEDIT, $LINENO, $PPID, $PS3, $PS4, $RANDOM, $SECONDS, and $TMOUT.
ps -p $$
should work anywhere that the solutions involving ps -ef and grep do (on any Unix variant which supports POSIX options for ps) and will not suffer from the false positives introduced by grepping for a sequence of digits which may appear elsewhere.
Try
ps -p $$ -oargs=
or
ps -p $$ -ocomm=
If you just want to ensure the user is invoking a script with Bash:
if [ -z "$BASH" ]; then echo "Please run this script $0 with bash"; exit; fi
or ref
if [ -z "$BASH" ]; then exec bash $0 ; exit; fi
You can try:
ps | grep `echo $$` | awk '{ print $4 }'
Or:
echo $SHELL
$SHELL need not always show the current shell. It only reflects the default shell to be invoked.
To test the above, say bash is the default shell, try echo $SHELL, and then in the same terminal, get into some other shell (KornShell (ksh) for example) and try $SHELL. You will see the result as bash in both cases.
To get the name of the current shell, Use cat /proc/$$/cmdline. And the path to the shell executable by readlink /proc/$$/exe.
There are many ways to find out the shell and its corresponding version. Here are few which worked for me.
Straightforward
$> echo $0 (Gives you the program name. In my case the output was -bash.)
$> $SHELL (This takes you into the shell and in the prompt you get the shell name and version. In my case bash3.2$.)
$> echo $SHELL (This will give you executable path. In my case /bin/bash.)
$> $SHELL --version (This will give complete info about the shell software with license type)
Hackish approach
$> ******* (Type a set of random characters and in the output you will get the shell name. In my case -bash: chapter2-a-sample-isomorphic-app: command not found)
ps is the most reliable method. The SHELL environment variable is not guaranteed to be set and even if it is, it can be easily spoofed.
I have a simple trick to find the current shell. Just type a random string (which is not a command). It will fail and return a "not found" error, but at start of the line it will say which shell it is:
ksh: aaaaa: not found [No such file or directory]
bash: aaaaa: command not found
I have tried many different approaches and the best one for me is:
ps -p $$
It also works under Cygwin and cannot produce false positives as PID grepping. With some cleaning, it outputs just an executable name (under Cygwin with path):
ps -p $$ | tail -1 | awk '{print $NF}'
You can create a function so you don't have to memorize it:
# Print currently active shell
shell () {
ps -p $$ | tail -1 | awk '{print $NF}'
}
...and then just execute shell.
It was tested under Debian and Cygwin.
The following will always give the actual shell used - it gets the name of the actual executable and not the shell name (i.e. ksh93 instead of ksh, etc.). For /bin/sh, it will show the actual shell used, i.e. dash.
ls -l /proc/$$/exe | sed 's%.*/%%'
I know that there are many who say the ls output should never be processed, but what is the probability you'll have a shell you are using that is named with special characters or placed in a directory named with special characters? If this is still the case, there are plenty of other examples of doing it differently.
As pointed out by Toby Speight, this would be a more proper and cleaner way of achieving the same:
basename $(readlink /proc/$$/exe)
My variant on printing the parent process:
ps -p $$ | awk '$1 == PP {print $4}' PP=$$
Don't run unnecessary applications when AWK can do it for you.
Provided that your /bin/sh supports the POSIX standard and your system has the lsof command installed - a possible alternative to lsof could in this case be pid2path - you can also use (or adapt) the following script that prints full paths:
#!/bin/sh
# cat /usr/local/bin/cursh
set -eu
pid="$$"
set -- sh bash zsh ksh ash dash csh tcsh pdksh mksh fish psh rc scsh bournesh wish Wish login
unset echo env sed ps lsof awk getconf
# getconf _POSIX_VERSION # reliable test for availability of POSIX system?
PATH="`PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin getconf PATH`"
[ $? -ne 0 ] && { echo "'getconf PATH' failed"; exit 1; }
export PATH
cmd="lsof"
env -i PATH="${PATH}" type "$cmd" 1>/dev/null 2>&1 || { echo "$cmd not found"; exit 1; }
awkstr="`echo "$#" | sed 's/\([^ ]\{1,\}\)/|\/\1/g; s/ /$/g' | sed 's/^|//; s/$/$/'`"
ppid="`env -i PATH="${PATH}" ps -p $pid -o ppid=`"
[ "${ppid}"X = ""X ] && { echo "no ppid found"; exit 1; }
lsofstr="`lsof -p $ppid`" ||
{ printf "%s\n" "lsof failed" "try: sudo lsof -p \`ps -p \$\$ -o ppid=\`"; exit 1; }
printf "%s\n" "${lsofstr}" |
LC_ALL=C awk -v var="${awkstr}" '$NF ~ var {print $NF}'
My solution:
ps -o command | grep -v -e "\<ps\>" -e grep -e tail | tail -1
This should be portable across different platforms and shells. It uses ps like other solutions, but it doesn't rely on sed or awk and filters out junk from piping and ps itself so that the shell should always be the last entry. This way we don't need to rely on non-portable PID variables or picking out the right lines and columns.
I've tested on Debian and macOS with Bash, Z shell (zsh), and fish (which doesn't work with most of these solutions without changing the expression specifically for fish, because it uses a different PID variable).
If you just want to check that you are running (a particular version of) Bash, the best way to do so is to use the $BASH_VERSINFO array variable. As a (read-only) array variable it cannot be set in the environment,
so you can be sure it is coming (if at all) from the current shell.
However, since Bash has a different behavior when invoked as sh, you do also need to check the $BASH environment variable ends with /bash.
In a script I wrote that uses function names with - (not underscore), and depends on associative arrays (added in Bash 4), I have the following sanity check (with helpful user error message):
case `eval 'echo $BASH#${BASH_VERSINFO[0]}' 2>/dev/null` in
*/bash#[456789])
# Claims bash version 4+, check for func-names and associative arrays
if ! eval "declare -A _ARRAY && func-name() { :; }" 2>/dev/null; then
echo >&2 "bash $BASH_VERSION is not supported (not really bash?)"
exit 1
fi
;;
*/bash#[123])
echo >&2 "bash $BASH_VERSION is not supported (version 4+ required)"
exit 1
;;
*)
echo >&2 "This script requires BASH (version 4+) - not regular sh"
echo >&2 "Re-run as \"bash $CMD\" for proper operation"
exit 1
;;
esac
You could omit the somewhat paranoid functional check for features in the first case, and just assume that future Bash versions would be compatible.
None of the answers worked with fish shell (it doesn't have the variables $$ or $0).
This works for me (tested on sh, bash, fish, ksh, csh, true, tcsh, and zsh; openSUSE 13.2):
ps | tail -n 4 | sed -E '2,$d;s/.* (.*)/\1/'
This command outputs a string like bash. Here I'm only using ps, tail, and sed (without GNU extesions; try to add --posix to check it). They are all standard POSIX commands. I'm sure tail can be removed, but my sed fu is not strong enough to do this.
It seems to me, that this solution is not very portable as it doesn't work on OS X. :(
echo $$ # Gives the Parent Process ID
ps -ef | grep $$ | awk '{print $8}' # Use the PID to see what the process is.
From How do you know what your current shell is?.
This is not a very clean solution, but it does what you want.
# MUST BE SOURCED..
getshell() {
local shell="`ps -p $$ | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}'`"
shells_array=(
# It is important that the shells are listed in descending order of their name length.
pdksh
bash dash mksh
zsh ksh
sh
)
local suited=false
for i in ${shells_array[*]}; do
if ! [ -z `printf $shell | grep $i` ] && ! $suited; then
shell=$i
suited=true
fi
done
echo $shell
}
getshell
Now you can use $(getshell) --version.
This works, though, only on KornShell-like shells (ksh).
Do the following to know whether your shell is using Dash/Bash.
ls –la /bin/sh:
if the result is /bin/sh -> /bin/bash ==> Then your shell is using Bash.
if the result is /bin/sh ->/bin/dash ==> Then your shell is using Dash.
If you want to change from Bash to Dash or vice-versa, use the below code:
ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh (change shell to Bash)
Note: If the above command results in a error saying, /bin/sh already exists, remove the /bin/sh and try again.
I like Nahuel Fouilleul's solution particularly, but I had to run the following variant of it on Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) with the built-in Bash shell:
bash -c 'shellPID=$$; ps -ocomm= -q $shellPID'
Without the temporary variable shellPID, e.g. the following:
bash -c 'ps -ocomm= -q $$'
Would just output ps for me. Maybe you aren't all using non-interactive mode, and that makes a difference.
Get it with the $SHELL environment variable. A simple sed could remove the path:
echo $SHELL | sed -E 's/^.*\/([aA-zZ]+$)/\1/g'
Output:
bash
It was tested on macOS, Ubuntu, and CentOS.
On Mac OS X (and FreeBSD):
ps -p $$ -axco command | sed -n '$p'
Grepping PID from the output of "ps" is not needed, because you can read the respective command line for any PID from the /proc directory structure:
echo $(cat /proc/$$/cmdline)
However, that might not be any better than just simply:
echo $0
About running an actually different shell than the name indicates, one idea is to request the version from the shell using the name you got previously:
<some_shell> --version
sh seems to fail with exit code 2 while others give something useful (but I am not able to verify all since I don't have them):
$ sh --version
sh: 0: Illegal option --
echo $?
2
One way is:
ps -p $$ -o exe=
which is IMO better than using -o args or -o comm as suggested in another answer (these may use, e.g., some symbolic link like when /bin/sh points to some specific shell as Dash or Bash).
The above returns the path of the executable, but beware that due to /usr-merge, one might need to check for multiple paths (e.g., /bin/bash and /usr/bin/bash).
Also note that the above is not fully POSIX-compatible (POSIX ps doesn't have exe).
Kindly use the below command:
ps -p $$ | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}'
This one works well on Red Hat Linux (RHEL), macOS, BSD and some AIXes:
ps -T $$ | awk 'NR==2{print $NF}'
alternatively, the following one should also work if pstree is available,
pstree | egrep $$ | awk 'NR==2{print $NF}'
You can use echo $SHELL|sed "s/\/bin\///g"
And I came up with this:
sed 's/.*SHELL=//; s/[[:upper:]].*//' /proc/$$/environ

Using xargs to assign stdin to a variable

All that I really want to do is make sure everything in a pipeline succeeded and assign the last stdin to a variable. Consider the following dumbed down scenario:
x=`exit 1|cat`
When I run declare -a, I see this:
declare -a PIPESTATUS='([0]="0")'
I need some way to notice the exit 1, so I converted it to this:
exit 1|cat|xargs -I {} x={}
And declare -a gave me:
declare -a PIPESTATUS='([0]="1" [1]="0" [2]="0")'
That is what I wanted, so I tried to see what would happen if the exit 1 didn't happen:
echo 1|cat|xargs -I {} x={}
But it fails with:
xargs: x={}: No such file or directory
Is there any way to have xargs assign {} to x? What about other methods of having PIPESTATUS work and assigning the stdin to a variable?
Note: these examples are dumbed down. I'm not really doing an exit 1, echo 1 or a cat, but used these commands to simplify so we can focus on my particular issue.
When you use backticks (or the preferred $()) you're running those commands in a subshell. The PIPESTATUS you're getting is for the assignment rather than the piped commands in the subshell.
When you use xargs, it knows nothing about the shell so it can't make variable assignments.
Try set -o pipefail then you can get the status from $?.
xargs is run in a child process, as are all the commands you call. So they can't effect the environment of your shell.
You might be able to do something with named pipes (mkfifo), or possible bash's read function?
EDIT:
Maybe just redirect the output to a file, then you can use PIPESTATUS:
command1 | command2 | command3 >/tmp/tmpfile
## Examine PIPESTATUS
X=$(cat /tmp/tmpfile)
How about ...
read x <<<"$(echo 1)"
read x < <(echo 1)
echo "$x"
Why not just populate a new array?
IFS=$'\n' read -r -d '' -a result < <(echo a | cat | cat; echo "PIPESTATUS='${PIPESTATUS[*]}'" )
IFS=$'\n' read -r -d '' -a result < <(echo a | exit 1 | cat; echo "PIPESTATUS='${PIPESTATUS[*]}'" )
echo "${#result[#]}"
echo "${result[#]}"
echo "${result[0]}"
echo "${result[1]}"
There are already a few helpful solutions. It turns out that I actually had an example that matches the question as framed above; close-enough anyway.
Consider this:
XX=$(ls -l *.cpp | wc -l | xargs -I{} echo {})
echo $XX
3
Meaning that I had 3 x .cpp files to in my working directory. Now $XX is 3 and I can make use of that result in my script. It is contrived, because I don't actually need the xargs in this example. It works though.
In the example from the question ...
x=`exit 1|cat`
I don't think that will give you what was specified. exit will quit the sub-shell before the cat gets a mention. Also on that note,
I might start with something like
declare -a PIPESTATUS='([0]="0")'
x=$?
x now has the status from the last command.
Assign each line of input to an array, e.g. all python files in a directory
declare -a pyFiles=($(ls -l *.py | awk '{print $9}'))
where $9 is the nineth field in ls -l corresponding to the filename

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