layout | title | subtitle | minutes |
---|---|---|---|
page |
The Unix Shell |
Loops |
15 |
- Write a loop that applies one or more commands separately to each file in a set of files.
- Trace the values taken on by a loop variable during execution of the loop.
- Explain the difference between a variable's name and its value.
- Explain why spaces and some punctuation characters shouldn't be used in file names.
- Demonstrate how to see what commands have recently been executed.
- Re-run recently executed commands without retyping them.
Loops are key to productivity improvements through automation as they allow us to execute
commands repetitively. Similar to wildcards and tab completion, using loops also reduces the
amount of typing (and typing mistakes).
Suppose we have several hundred genome data files named basilisk.dat
, unicorn.dat
, and so on.
In this example,
we'll use the creatures
directory which only has two example files,
but the principles can be applied to many many more files at once.
We would like to modify these files, but also save a version of the original files, naming the copies
original-basilisk.dat
and original-unicorn.dat
.
We can't use:
$ cp *.dat original-*.dat
because that would expand to:
$ cp basilisk.dat unicorn.dat original-*.dat
This wouldn't back up our files, instead we get an error:
cp: target `original-*.dat' is not a directory
This problem arises when cp
receives more than two inputs. When this happens, it
expects the last input to be a directory where it can copy all the files it was passed.
Since there is no directory named original-*.dat
in the creatures
directory we get an
error.
Instead, we can use a loop to do some operation once for each thing in a list. Here's a simple example that displays the first three lines of each file in turn:
$ for filename in basilisk.dat unicorn.dat
> do
> head -n 3 $filename
> done
COMMON NAME: basilisk
CLASSIFICATION: basiliscus vulgaris
UPDATED: 1745-05-02
COMMON NAME: unicorn
CLASSIFICATION: equus monoceros
UPDATED: 1738-11-24
When the shell sees the keyword for
,
it knows it is supposed to repeat a command (or group of commands) once for each thing in a list.
In this case, the list is the two filenames.
Each time through the loop,
the name of the thing currently being operated on is assigned to
the variable called filename
.
Inside the loop,
we get the variable's value by putting $
in front of it:
$filename
is basilisk.dat
the first time through the loop,
unicorn.dat
the second,
and so on.
By using the dollar sign we are telling the shell interpreter to treat
filename
as a variable name and substitute its value on its place,
but not as some text or external command. When using variables it is also
possible to put the names into curly braces to clearly delimit the variable
name: $filename
is equivalent to ${filename}
, but is different from
${file}name
. You may find this notation in other people's programs.
Finally,
the command that's actually being run is our old friend head
,
so this loop prints out the first three lines of each data file in turn.
The shell prompt changes from
$
to>
and back again as we were typing in our loop. The second prompt,>
, is different to remind us that we haven't finished typing a complete command yet. A semicolon,;
, can be used to separate two commands written on a single line.
Here we see
>
being used a shell prompt, whereas>
is also used to redirect output. Similarly,$
is used as a shell prompt, but, as we saw earler, it is also used to ask the shell to get the value of a variable.If the shell prints
>
or$
then it expects you to type something, and the symbol is a prompt.If you type
>
or$
yourself, it is an instruction from you that the shell to redirect output or get the value of a variable.
We have called the variable in this loop filename
in order to make its purpose clearer to human readers.
The shell itself doesn't care what the variable is called;
if we wrote this loop as:
for x in basilisk.dat unicorn.dat
do
head -n 3 $x
done
or:
for temperature in basilisk.dat unicorn.dat
do
head -n 3 $temperature
done
it would work exactly the same way.
Don't do this.
Programs are only useful if people can understand them,
so meaningless names (like x
) or misleading names (like temperature
)
increase the odds that the program won't do what its readers think it does.
Here's a slightly more complicated loop:
for filename in *.dat
do
echo $filename
head -n 100 $filename | tail -n 20
done
The shell starts by expanding *.dat
to create the list of files it will process.
The loop body
then executes two commands for each of those files.
The first, echo
, just prints its command-line parameters to standard output.
For example:
$ echo hello there
prints:
hello there
In this case,
since the shell expands $filename
to be the name of a file,
echo $filename
just prints the name of the file.
Note that we can't write this as:
for filename in *.dat
do
$filename
head -n 100 $filename | tail -n 20
done
because then the first time through the loop,
when $filename
expanded to basilisk.dat
, the shell would try to run basilisk.dat
as a program.
Finally,
the head
and tail
combination selects lines 81-100 from whatever file is being processed.
Filename expansion in loops is another reason you should not use spaces in filenames. Suppose our data files are named:
basilisk.dat red dragon.dat unicorn.dat
If we try to process them using:
for filename in *.dat do head -n 100 $filename | tail -n 20 done
then the shell will expand
*.dat
to create:basilisk.dat red dragon.dat unicorn.dat
With older versions of Bash, or most other shells,
filename
will then be assigned the following values in turn:basilisk.dat red dragon.dat unicorn.dat
That's a problem:
head
can't read files calledred
anddragon.dat
because they don't exist, and won't be asked to read the filered dragon.dat
.We can make our script a little bit more robust by quoting our use of the variable:
for filename in *.dat do head -n 100 "$filename" | tail -n 20 done
but it's simpler just to avoid using spaces (or other special characters) in filenames.
Going back to our original file copying problem, we can solve it using this loop:
for filename in *.dat
do
cp $filename original-$filename
done
This loop runs the cp
command once for each filename.
The first time,
when $filename
expands to basilisk.dat
,
the shell executes:
cp basilisk.dat original-basilisk.dat
The second time, the command is:
cp unicorn.dat original-unicorn.dat
A loop is a way to do many things at once --- or to make many mistakes at once if it does the wrong thing. One way to check what a loop would do is to echo the commands it would run instead of actually running them. For example, we could write our file copying loop like this:
for filename in *.dat do echo cp $filename original-$filename done
Instead of running
cp
, this loop runsecho
, which prints out:cp basilisk.dat original-basilisk.dat cp unicorn.dat original-unicorn.dat
without actually running those commands. We can then use up-arrow to redisplay the loop, back-arrow to get to the word
echo
, delete it, and then press Enter to run the loop with the actualcp
commands. This isn't foolproof, but it's a handy way to see what's going to happen when you're still learning how loops work.
Nelle is now ready to process her data files. Since she's still learning how to use the shell, she decides to build up the required commands in stages. Her first step is to make sure that she can select the right files --- remember, these are ones whose names end in 'A' or 'B', rather than 'Z'. Starting from her home directory, Nelle types:
$ cd north-pacific-gyre/2012-07-03
$ for datafile in *[AB].txt
> do
> echo $datafile
> done
NENE01729A.txt
NENE01729B.txt
NENE01736A.txt
...
NENE02043A.txt
NENE02043B.txt
Her next step is to decide
what to call the files that the goostats
analysis program will create.
Prefixing each input file's name with "stats" seems simple,
so she modifies her loop to do that:
$ for datafile in *[AB].txt
> do
> echo $datafile stats-$datafile
> done
NENE01729A.txt stats-NENE01729A.txt
NENE01729B.txt stats-NENE01729B.txt
NENE01736A.txt stats-NENE01736A.txt
...
NENE02043A.txt stats-NENE02043A.txt
NENE02043B.txt stats-NENE02043B.txt
She hasn't actually run goostats
yet,
but now she's sure she can select the right files and generate the right output filenames.
Typing in commands over and over again is becoming tedious, though, and Nelle is worried about making mistakes, so instead of re-entering her loop, she presses the up arrow. In response, the shell redisplays the whole loop on one line (using semi-colons to separate the pieces):
$ for datafile in *[AB].txt; do echo $datafile stats-$datafile; done
Using the left arrow key,
Nelle backs up and changes the command echo
to bash goostats
:
$ for datafile in *[AB].txt; do bash goostats $datafile stats-$datafile; done
When she presses Enter, the shell runs the modified command. However, nothing appears to happen --- there is no output. After a moment, Nelle realizes that since her script doesn't print anything to the screen any longer, she has no idea whether it is running, much less how quickly. She kills the running command by typing Ctrl-C, uses up-arrow to repeat the command, and edits it to read:
$ for datafile in *[AB].txt; do echo $datafile; bash goostats $datafile stats-$datafile; done
We can move to the beginning of a line in the shell by typing Ctrl-A and to the end using Ctrl-E.
When she runs her program now, it produces one line of output every five seconds or so:
NENE01729A.txt
NENE01729B.txt
NENE01736A.txt
...
1518 times 5 seconds,
divided by 60,
tells her that her script will take about two hours to run.
As a final check,
she opens another terminal window,
goes into north-pacific-gyre/2012-07-03
,
and uses cat stats-NENE01729B.txt
to examine one of the output files.
It looks good,
so she decides to get some coffee and catch up on her reading.
Another way to repeat previous work is to use the
history
command to get a list of the last few hundred commands that have been executed, and then to use!123
(where "123" is replaced by the command number) to repeat one of those commands. For example, if Nelle types this:$ history | tail -n 5 456 ls -l NENE0*.txt 457 rm stats-NENE01729B.txt.txt 458 bash goostats NENE01729B.txt stats-NENE01729B.txt 459 ls -l NENE0*.txt 460 history
then she can re-run
goostats
onNENE01729B.txt
simply by typing!458
.
There are a number of other shortcut commands for getting at the history. Two of the more useful are
!!
, which retrieves the immediately preceding command (you may or may not find this more convenient than plain up-arrow), and!$
, which retrieves the last word of the last command. That's useful more often than you might expect: afterbash goostats NENE01729B.txt stats-NENE01729B.txt
, you can typeless !$
to look at the filestats-NENE01729B.txt
, which is quicker than doing up-arrow and editing the command-line.
Suppose that
ls
initially displays:fructose.dat glucose.dat sucrose.dat
What is the output of:
for datafile in *.dat do ls *.dat done
Now, what is the output of:
for datafile in *.dat do ls $datafile done
Why do these two loops give you different outputs?
In the same directory, what is the effect of this loop?
for sugar in *.dat do echo $sugar cat $sugar > xylose.dat done
- Prints
fructose.dat
,glucose.dat
, andsucrose.dat
, and the text fromsucrose.dat
will be saved to a file calledxylose.dat
.- Prints
fructose.dat
,glucose.dat
, andsucrose.dat
, and the text from all three files would be concatenated and saved to a file calledxylose.dat
.- Prints
fructose.dat
,glucose.dat
,sucrose.dat
, andxylose.dat
, and the text fromsucrose.dat
will be saved to a file calledxylose.dat
.- None of the above.
In another directory, where
ls
returns:fructose.dat glucose.dat sucrose.dat maltose.txt
What would be the output of the following loop?
for datafile in *.dat do cat $datafile >> sugar.dat done
- All of the text from
fructose.dat
,glucose.dat
andsucrose.dat
would be concatenated and saved to a file calledsugar.dat
.- The text from
sucrose.dat
will be saved to a file calledsugar.dat
.- All of the text from
fructose.dat
,glucose.dat
,sucrose.dat
andmaltose.txt
would be concatenated and saved to a file calledsugar.dat
.- All of the text from
fructose.dat
,glucose.dat
andsucrose.dat
would be printed to the screen and saved to a file calledsugar.dat
Suppose we want to preview the commands the following loop will execute without actually running those commands:
for file in *.dat do analyze $file > analyzed-$file done
What is the difference between the two loops below, and which one would we want to run?
# Version 1 for file in *.dat do echo analyze $file > analyzed-$file done
# Version 2 for file in *.dat do echo "analyze $file > analyzed-$file" done
Suppose we want to set up up a directory structure to organize some experiments measuring the growth rate under different sugar types and different temperatures. What would be the result of the following code:
for sugar in fructose glucose sucrose do for temperature in 25 30 37 40 do mkdir $sugar-$temperature done done