Automating the tedious with loops

Last updated on 2023-05-08 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 30 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • What is a loop?
  • How can a loop be used to repeat a task?

Objectives

  • Describe how loops can be used to repeat tasks
  • Implement a loop to rename several files

Writing a Loop

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 document files named project_1825.txt, project_1863.txt, XML_project.txt and so on. We would like to change these files, but also save a version of the original files, naming the copies backup_project_1825.txt and so on.

We can use a loop to do that. Here’s a simple example that creates a backup copy of four text files in turn.

Let’s first create those files:

$ touch a.txt b.txt c.txt d.txt

This will create four empty files with those names.

Now we will use a loop to create a backup version of those files. First let’s look at the general form of a loop:

BASH 

for thing in list_of_things
do
    operation_using $thing    # Indentation within the loop is not required, but aids legibility
done

We can apply this to our example like this:

BASH 

$ for filename in ?.txt
> do
>    echo "$filename"
>    cp "$filename" backup_"$filename"
> done

OUTPUT 

a.txt
b.txt
c.txt
d.txt

When the shell sees the keyword for, it knows to repeat a command (or group of commands) once for each thing in a list. For each iteration, the name of each thing is sequentially assigned to the loop variable and the commands inside the loop are executed before moving on to the next thing in the list. Inside the loop, we call for the variable’s value by putting $ in front of it. The $ tells the shell interpreter to treat the variable as a variable name and substitute its value in its place, rather than treat it as text or an external command.

Double-quoting variable substitutions

Because real-world filenames often contain white-spaces, we wrap $filename in double quotes ("). If we didn’t, the shell would treat the white-space within a filename as a separator between two different filenames, which usually results in errors. Therefore, it’s best and generally safer to use "$..." unless you are absolutely sure that no elements with white-space can ever enter your loop variable (such as in episode 5).

In this example, the list is four filenames: ‘a.txt’, ‘b.txt’, ‘c.txt’, and ‘d.txt’ Each time the loop iterates, it will assign a file name to the variable filename and run the cp command. The first time through the loop, $filename is a.txt. The interpreter prints the filename to the screen and then runs the command cp on a.txt, (because we asked it to echo each filename as it works its way through the loop). For the second iteration, $filename becomes b.txt. This time, the shell prints the filename b.txt to the screen, then runs cp on b.txt. The loop performs the same operations for c.txt and then for d.txt and then, since the list only included these four items, the shell exits the for loop at that point.

Follow the Prompt

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.

Same Symbols, Different Meanings

Here we see > being used as a shell prompt, but > can also be used to redirect output from a command (i.e. send it somewhere else, such as to a file, instead of displaying the output in the terminal) — we’ll use redirection in episode 5. Similarly, $ is used as a shell prompt, but, as we saw earlier, 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 > in the shell, it is an instruction from you to the shell to redirect output.

If you type $ in the shell, it is an instruction from you to the shell to 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.

For loop exercise

Complete the blanks in the for loop below to print the name, first line, and last line of each text file in the current directory.

BASH 

___ file in *.txt
__
	echo "_file"
	head -n 1 _______
	____ __ _ _______
____

BASH 

for file in *.txt
do
	echo "$file"
	head -n 1 "$file"
	tail -n 1 "$file"
done

This is our first look at loops. We will run another loop in the Counting and Mining with the Shell episode.

For Loop in Action

Running the loop from a Bash script

Alternatively, rather than running the loop above on the command line, you can save it in a script file and run it from the command line without having to rewrite the loop again. This is what is called a Bash script which is a plain text file that contains a series of commands like the loop you created above. In the example script below, the first line of the file contains what is called a Shebang (#!) followed by the path to the interpreter (or program) that will run the rest of the lines in the file (/bin/bash). The second line demonstrates how comments are made in scripts. This provides you with more information about what the script does. The remaining lines contain the loop you created above. You can create this file in the same directory you’ve been using for the lesson and by using the text editor of your choice (e.g. nano) but when you save the file, make sure it has the extension .sh (e.g. my_first_bash_script.sh). When you’ve done this, you can run the Bash script by typing the command bash and the file name via the command line (e.g. bash my_first_bash_script.sh).

#!/bin/bash
# This script loops through .txt files, returns the file name, first line, and last line of the file
for file in *.txt
do
	echo $file
	head -n 1 $file
	tail -n 1 $file
done

Download/copy my_first_bash_script.sh. For more on Bash scripts, see Bash Scripting Tutorial - Ryans Tutorials.

Key Points

  • Looping is the foundation for working smarter with the command line
  • Loops help us to do the same (or similar) things to a bunch of items