Lab 2

UNIX/LINUX Shell programming

Variable, Special Variable.

Objective: Understand and implement Variable, Special

Variable in Linux Shell.
A variable is a character string to which we assign a value. The value assigned could
be a number, text, filename, device, or any other type of data.

A variable is nothing more than a pointer to the actual data. The shell enables you to
create, assign, and delete variables.

Variable Names
The name of a variable can contain only letters ( a to z or A to Z), numbers ( 0 to 9) or
the underscore character ( _).

By convention, Unix Shell variables would have their names in UPPERCASE.

The following examples are vUniversityd variable names −

_UNIVERSITY
TOKEN_A
VAR_1
VAR_2

Following are the examples of invUniversityd variable names −

2_VAR
-VARIABLE
VAR1-VAR2
VAR_A!

The reason you cannot use other characters such as !,*, or - is that these characters
have a special meaning for the shell.

Defining Variables
Variables are defined as follows −

variable_name=variable_value
For example:

NAME="IU_stuudent"

Above example defines the variable NAME and assigns it the value "IU_Student".
Variables of this type are called scalar variables. A scalar variable can hold only one
value at a time.

The shell enables you to store any value you want in a variable. For example −

VAR1="IU_Student"
VAR2=100

Accessing Values
To access the value stored in a variable, prefix its name with the dollar sign ( $) −

For example, following script would access the value of defined variable NAME and
would print it on STDOUT −

#!/bin/sh

NAME="IU_Student"
echo $NAME

This would produce following value −

IU_Student

Read-only Variables
The shell provides a way to mark variables as read-only by using the readonly command.
After a variable is marked read-only, its value cannot be changed.

For example, following script would give error while trying to change the value of NAME
−

#!/bin/sh

NAME="IU_Student"
readonly NAME
NAME="New_student"

This would produce following result −

/bin/sh: NAME: This variable is read only.

Unsetting Variables
Unsetting or deleting a variable tells the shell to remove the variable from the list of
variables that it tracks. Once you unset a variable, you would not be able to access
stored value in the variable.

Following is the syntax to unset a defined variable using the unset command −

unset variable_name

Above command would unset the value of a defined variable. Here is a simple example
−

#!/bin/sh

NAME="IU_Student"
unset NAME
echo $NAME

Above example would not print anything. You cannot use the unset command
tounset variables that are marked readonly.

Variable Types
When a shell is running, three main types of variables are present −

• Local Variables − A local variable is a variable that is present within the current instance of
the shell. It is not available to programs that are started by the shell. They are set at command
prompt.

• Environment Variables − An environment variable is a variable that is available to any child

process of the shell. Some programs need environment variables in order to function
correctly. Usually a shell script defines only those environment variables that are needed by
the programs that it runs.

• Shell Variables − A shell variable is a special variable that is set by the shell and is required
by the shell in order to function correctly. Some of these variables are environment variables
whereas others are local variables.

• The following table shows a number of special variables that you can use in your
shell scripts

Variable Description

$0 The filename of the current script.

$n These variables correspond to the arguments with which a script was invoked. Here n
is a positive decimal number corresponding to the position of an argument (the first
argument is $1, the second argument is $2, and so on).
 $# The number of arguments supplied to a script.

$* All the arguments are double quoted. If a script receives two arguments, $* is
equivalent to $1 $2.

$@ All the arguments are individually double quoted. If a script receives two arguments,
$@ is equivalent to $1 $2.

$? The exit status of the last command executed.

$$ The process number of the current shell. For shell scripts, this is the process ID under
which they are executing.

$! The process number of the last background command.

Command-Line Arguments
The command-line arguments $1, $2, $3,...$9 are positional parameters, with $0 pointing
to the actual command, program, shell script, or function and $1, $2, $3, ...$9 as the
arguments to the command.

Following script uses various special variables related to command line −

#!/bin/sh

echo "File Name: $0"

echo "First Parameter : $1"
echo "Second Parameter : $2"
echo "Quoted Values: $@"
echo "Quoted Values: $*"
echo "Total Number of Parameters : $#"

Here is a sample run for the above script −

$./test.sh IU Student
File Name : ./test.sh
First Parameter : IU
Second Parameter : Student
Quoted Values: IU Student
Quoted Values: IU Student
Total Number of Parameters : 2

Special Parameters $* and $@

There are special parameters that allow accessing all of the command-line arguments
at once. $* and $@ both will act the same unless they are enclosed in double quotes, "".
Both the parameter specifies all command-line arguments but the "$*" special parameter
takes the entire list as one argument with spaces between and the "$@" special
parameter takes the entire list and separates it into separate arguments.

We can write the shell script shown below to process an unknown number of command-
line arguments with either the $* or $@ special parameters −

#!/bin/sh

for TOKEN in $*
do
echo $TOKEN
done

There is one sample run for the above script −

$./test.sh IU Student 17 Years Old

IU
Student
17
Years
Old

Exit Status
The $? variable represents the exit status of the previous command.

Exit status is a numerical value returned by every command upon its completion. As a
rule, most commands return an exit status of 0 if they were successful, and 1 if they were
unsuccessful.

Some commands return additional exit statuses for particular reasons. For example,
some commands differentiate between kinds of errors and will return various exit values
depending on the specific type of failure.

Following is the example of successful command −

$./test.sh IU Student
File Name : ./test.sh
First Parameter : IU
Second Parameter : Student
Quoted Values: IU Student
Quoted Values: IU Student
Total Number of Parameters : 2
$echo $?
0
$
Task: Use following variables to write your CV in Linux bash script.
Variable Script Output

$0

$n

$#

$*

$@

$?

$$

$!