36.2. Bash, version 3

On July 27, 2004, Chet Ramey released version 3 of Bash. This update fixed quite a number of bugs and added new features.

Some of the more important added features:

• A new, more generalized {a..z} brace expansion operator.

  #!/bin/bash for i in {1..10} # Simpler and more straightforward than #+ for i in $(seq 10) do echo -n "$i " done echo # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 # Or just . . . echo {a..z} # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z echo {e..m} # e f g h i j k l m echo {z..a} # z y x w v u t s r q p o n m l k j i h g f e d c b a # Works backwards, too. echo {25..30} # 25 26 27 28 29 30 echo {3..-2} # 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 echo {X..d} # X Y Z [ ] ^ _ ` a b c d # Shows (some of) the ASCII characters between Z and a, #+ but don't rely on this type of behavior because . . . echo {]..a} # {]..a} # Why? # You can tack on prefixes and suffixes. echo "Number #"{1..4}, "..." # Number #1, Number #2, Number #3, Number #4, ... # You can concatenate brace-expansion sets. echo {1..3}{x..z}" +" "..." # 1x + 1y + 1z + 2x + 2y + 2z + 3x + 3y + 3z + ... # Generates an algebraic expression. # This could be used to find permutations. # You can nest brace-expansion sets. echo {{a..c},{1..3}} # a b c 1 2 3 # The "comma operator" splices together strings. # Unfortunately, brace expansion does not lend itself to parameterization. var1=1 var2=5 echo {$var1..$var2} # {1..5}

• The ${!array[@]} operator, which expands to all the indices of a given array.

  #!/bin/bash Array=(element-zero element-one element-two element-three) echo ${Array[0]} # element-zero # First element of array. echo ${!Array[@]} # 0 1 2 3 # All the indices of Array. for i in ${!Array[@]} do echo ${Array[i]} # element-zero # element-one # element-two # element-three # # All the elements in Array. done

• The =~ Regular Expression matching operator within a double brackets test expression. (Perl has a similar operator.)

  #!/bin/bash variable="This is a fine mess." echo "$variable" # Regex matching with =~ operator within [[ double brackets ]]. if [[ "$variable" =~ T.........fin*es* ]] # NOTE: As of version 3.2 of Bash, expression to match no longer quoted. then echo "match found" # match found fi

  Or, more usefully:

  #!/bin/bash input=$1 if [[ "$input" =~ "[0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]" ]] # ^ NOTE: Quoting not necessary, as of version 3.2 of Bash. # NNN-NN-NNNN (where each N is a digit). then echo "Social Security number." # Process SSN. else echo "Not a Social Security number!" # Or, ask for corrected input. fi

  For additional examples of using the =~ operator, see Example A-29, Example 19-14, Example A-35, and Example A-24.

• The new set -o pipefail option is useful for debugging pipes. If this option is set, then the exit status of a pipe is the exit status of the last command in the pipe to fail (return a non-zero value), rather than the actual final command in the pipe.

  See Example 16-43.

The update to version 3 of Bash breaks a few scripts that worked under earlier versions. Test critical legacy scripts to make sure they still work! As it happens, a couple of the scripts in the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide had to be fixed up (see Example 9-4, for instance).