Command-line parsing order.

Special characters.
Command execution.
Shell variables.

Department of Computer Systems FIT, Czech Technical University in Prague

Jan Trdlika, 2014
CTU - FIT

BIE-PS1 Command line interface

Motivation
Variables
A=Hello
A="Number of logged-in users:

`finger | tail +2 | wc l` "

Commands
ls la /
echo $A
finger | tail +2 | wc l
:(){ [ $1 -gt $2 ] && echo $1 || echo $2; }; : 1 3; : 2 1
Meta-characters

Characters that represent something other than its literal self (depending
on the context).
#, " '', , ` `, \, $, |, {}, (), [],
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BIE-PS1 Command line interface

Command Line Parse Order

1.

Turning off the special meaning of characters

\

(backslash/escape) turns off the special meaning of the following

character.

(single quotes) turn off the special meaning of all characters

""

(double quotes) turn off the special meaning of characters except:

\

turn off the special meaning of the following character

` cmd`

command substitution

$NAME - variable substitution

$(( expr )) - arithmetic expansion (except sh)
$( cmd ) - command substitution (except sh)

Shell remove these characters during command line parsing.

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Command Line Parse Order

2.
3.

Comment removing # (hash)

Command line splitting into simple commands and definition of I/Os

Simple command

Sequence of one or more commands separated by the character '|'.

List

Command name followed by options and arguments.

Pipeline

Sequence of optional variable assignment followed by blank-separated

words.

Sequence of one or more pipelines separated by one of the operators ;

& && or ||, and optionally terminated by one of ; & <newline>.

Compound command
( list ) { list ; } (( expression )) [[ expression ]] for while until if case.

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Command Line Parse Order

Input/output Redirection

File descriptor is an abstract indicator for accessing a file (0,1,2,).

Every process has 3 standard POSIX file descriptors by default:

0 standard command input (stdin)
1 standard command output (stdout)
2 standard command error output (stderr)

New process inherits file descriptors from his parent process by default.
User can redefine/redirect every file descriptor by special characters.
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Command Line Parse Order

cmd < file

(less than) executes cmd, using file as the source

of the standard input

cmd > file

(greater then) executes cmd, placing the standard

output in file

cmd >> file

executes cmd, appends the standard output to the

end of the file

cmd << string

here-document, shell reads lines until the line

begining with the given string, then all lines are
sent to standard input

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Command Line Parse Order

cmd 2> file
cmd >&n
cmd m>&n

cmd > file 2>&1

executes cmd, placing the standard error

output in file
executes cmd, placing the standard output in
file defined by file descriptor n
executes cmd, placing the output defined by
file descriptor m in file defined by file
descriptor n
executes cmd, placing the standard output
and standard error output in

IO redirection is evaluated from left to right.

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Command Line Parse Order

Exit status/return code is a small number passed from a child
process to a parent process when it has finished executing.
(0 = succes, 1,2,3,, 255 = error)
cmd &

(ampersand) The shell executes the command in the

background in a subshell. The shell does not wait for
the command to finish.

cmd1 ; cmd2

(semicolon) Commands are executed sequentially; the

shell waits for each command to terminate in turn.

( cmd1 ; cmd2 )

(brackets) Commands are executed sequentially by the

subshell.

{ cmd1 ; cmd2 ; }

(brackets) Commands are executed sequentially by

current shell.

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Command Line Parse Order

cmd1 | cmd2

(pipe/pipeline)
The standard output of cmd1 is connected via
a pipe to the standard input of cmd2.
Commands are executed in parallel.
The return status of a pipeline is the exit
status of the last command.

cmd1 && cmd2

cmd2 is executed if, and only if, cmd1 returns

an exit status of zero.

cmd1 || cmd2

cmd2 is executed if and only if cmdd1 returns

a non-zero exit status.

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BIE-PS1 Command line interface

Command Line Parse Order

4. Replacement of

Aliases
Directory name abbreviation ~ (tilde)
~
Home directory of the current user (except of sh)
~username Home directory of the given user (except of sh)
Command substitutions
` cmd `
Shell performs the expansion by executing cmd
and replacing the command substitution with the
standard output of the cmd.

$( cmd ) Different syntax.

Arithmetic expressions $(( expr ))

Variables ($1, $HOME,)

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(except of sh)

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Command Line Parse Order

5. Word splitting

newline space TAB

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Default word separators (it can be

change by shell variables IFS)

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Command Line Parse Order

6. File Name Substitution
*

(asterisk) matches zero or more characters, except the

leading . (period) of a hidden file.
(question mark) matches exactly one character except
the leading . (period) of a hidden file.

?
[abc]

[a-z]

(square brackets) matches one character in the set or

in the range

[!abc] [!a-z]

matches one character not in the set or in the range

[^ijk] [^m-z]

( [^] except of sh)

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Command Line Parse Order

7.
8.

Options and arguments setting

Variable setting or command execution
Command eval string

The command line is scanned twice by the shell.

First, the shell interprets the command line when it passes to the eval
command.

Then shell interprets it a second time as a result of executing the eval

command
Example:
unset B ; A='$B' ; B=date ; echo $A
unset B ; A='$B' ; B=date ; eval echo $A
echo Enter command: " ; read A ; eval $A
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Command Execution

Which program will be executed?

Absolute/relative path to command

Shell function

Shell built-in command

Only program name

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Shell variable PATH contains list of directories.

The shell searches through each of these directories, one by one, until
it finds a directory where the executable program exists.

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Shell Variables
variable=value
export variable[=value]
$variable
set [variable]
env

Creation of local variable

Creation of environment/global variable
Display the content of variable
List all variables
List only the environment/global variables

Some built-in shell variables

$PS1

defines prompt

$PAGER

defines program for displaying of man. pages

$PATH

list of directories for command searching

$MANPATH

list of directories for manual pages searching

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Shell Variables

Some built-in shell variables

HOME

home directory

PWD

current working directory

program name

1,,9

command line arguments

number of command line arguments

process ID of current shell

exit status of the last executed command

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