Chapter 2. Starting Off With a Sha-Bang
In the simplest case, a script is nothing more than a list of system commands stored in a file. At the very least, this saves the effort of retyping that particular sequence of commands each time it is invoked.
Example 2-1. cleanup: A script to clean up the log files in /var/log
1 # cleanup 2 # Run as root, of course. 3 4 cd /var/log 5 cat /dev/null > messages 6 cat /dev/null > wtmp 7 echo "Logs cleaned up." |
There is nothing unusual here, just a set of commands that could just as easily be invoked one by one from the command line on the console or in an xterm. The advantages of placing the commands in a script go beyond not having to retype them time and again. The script can easily be modified, customized, or generalized for a particular application.
Example 2-2. cleanup: An enhanced and generalized version of above script.
1 #!/bin/bash
2 # cleanup, version 2
3 # Run as root, of course.
4
5 LOG_DIR=/var/log
6 ROOT_UID=0 # Only users with $UID 0 have root privileges.
7 LINES=50 # Default number of lines saved.
8 E_XCD=66 # Can't change directory?
9 E_NOTROOT=67 # Non-root exit error.
10
11
12 if [ "$UID" -ne "$ROOT_UID" ]
13 then
14 echo "Must be root to run this script."
15 exit $E_NOTROOT
16 fi
17
18 if [ -n "$1" ]
19 # Test if command line argument present (non-empty).
20 then
21 lines=$1
22 else
23 lines=$LINES # Default, if not specified on command line.
24 fi
25
26
27 # Stephane Chazelas suggests the following,
28 #+ as a better way of checking command line arguments,
29 #+ but this is still a bit advanced for this stage of the tutorial.
30 #
31 # E_WRONGARGS=65 # Non-numerical argument (bad arg format)
32 #
33 # case "$1" in
34 # "" ) lines=50;;
35 # *[!0-9]*) echo "Usage: `basename $0` file-to-cleanup"; exit $E_WRONGARGS;;
36 # * ) lines=$1;;
37 # esac
38 #
39 #* Skip ahead to "Loops" chapter to decipher all this.
40
41
42 cd $LOG_DIR
43
44 if [ `pwd` != "$LOG_DIR" ] # or if [ "$PWD" != "$LOG_DIR" ]
45 # Not in /var/log?
46 then
47 echo "Can't change to $LOG_DIR."
48 exit $E_XCD
49 fi # Doublecheck if in right directory, before messing with log file.
50
51 # far more efficient is:
52 #
53 # cd /var/log || {
54 # echo "Cannot change to necessary directory." >&2
55 # exit $E_XCD;
56 # }
57
58
59
60
61 tail -$lines messages > mesg.temp # Saves last section of message log file.
62 mv mesg.temp messages # Becomes new log directory.
63
64
65 # cat /dev/null > messages
66 #* No longer needed, as the above method is safer.
67
68 cat /dev/null > wtmp # ': > wtmp' and '> wtmp' have the same effect.
69 echo "Logs cleaned up."
70
71 exit 0
72 # A zero return value from the script upon exit
73 #+ indicates success to the shell. |
Since you may not wish to wipe out the entire system log, this variant of the first script keeps the last section of the message log intact. You will constantly discover ways of refining previously written scripts for increased effectiveness.
The sha-bang ( #!) at the head of a script tells your system that this file is a set of commands to be fed to the command interpreter indicated. The #! is actually a two-byte [1] "magic number", a special marker that designates a file type, or in this case an executable shell script (see man magic for more details on this fascinating topic). Immediately following the sha-bang is a path name. This is the path to the program that interprets the commands in the script, whether it be a shell, a programming language, or a utility. This command interpreter then executes the commands in the script, starting at the top (line 1 of the script), ignoring comments. [2]
1 #!/bin/sh 2 #!/bin/bash 3 #!/usr/bin/perl 4 #!/usr/bin/tcl 5 #!/bin/sed -f 6 #!/usr/awk -f |
Each of the above script header lines calls a different command interpreter, be it /bin/sh, the default shell (bash in a Linux system) or otherwise. [3] Using #!/bin/sh, the default Bourne Shell in most commercial variants of UNIX, makes the script portable to non-Linux machines, though you may have to sacrifice a few Bash-specific features. The script will, however, conform to the POSIX [4] sh standard.
Note that the path given at the "sha-bang" must be correct, otherwise an error message -- usually "Command not found" -- will be the only result of running the script.
#! can be omitted if the script consists only of a set of generic system commands, using no internal shell directives. The second example, above, requires the initial #!, since the variable assignment line, lines=50, uses a shell-specific construct. Note again that #!/bin/sh invokes the default shell interpreter, which defaults to /bin/bash on a Linux machine.
 | This tutorial encourages a modular approach to constructing a script. Make note of and collect "boilerplate" code snippets that might be useful in future scripts. Eventually you can build a quite extensive library of nifty routines. As an example, the following script prolog tests whether the script has been invoked with the correct number of parameters.
|
2.1. Invoking the script
Having written the script, you can invoke it by sh scriptname, [5] or alternatively bash scriptname. (Not recommended is using sh <scriptname, since this effectively disables reading from stdin within the script.) Much more convenient is to make the script itself directly executable with a chmod.
- Either:
chmod 555 scriptname (gives everyone read/execute permission) [6]
- or
chmod +rx scriptname (gives everyone read/execute permission)
chmod u+rx scriptname (gives only the script owner read/execute permission)
Having made the script executable, you may now test it by ./scriptname. [7] If it begins with a "sha-bang" line, invoking the script calls the correct command interpreter to run it.
As a final step, after testing and debugging, you would likely want to move it to /usr/local/bin (as root, of course), to make the script available to yourself and all other users as a system-wide executable. The script could then be invoked by simply typing scriptname [ENTER] from the command line.