Bash – your single most favorite command-line trick using Bash?

Bash Space-Separated (e.g., --option argument)

cat >/tmp/demo-space-separated.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash

POSITIONAL=()
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
  key="$1"

  case $key in
    -e|--extension)
      EXTENSION="$2"
      shift # past argument
      shift # past value
      ;;
    -s|--searchpath)
      SEARCHPATH="$2"
      shift # past argument
      shift # past value
      ;;
    -l|--lib)
      LIBPATH="$2"
      shift # past argument
      shift # past value
      ;;
    --default)
      DEFAULT=YES
      shift # past argument
      ;;
    *)    # unknown option
      POSITIONAL+=("$1") # save it in an array for later
      shift # past argument
      ;;
  esac
done

set -- "${POSITIONAL[@]}" # restore positional parameters

echo "FILE EXTENSION  = ${EXTENSION}"
echo "SEARCH PATH     = ${SEARCHPATH}"
echo "LIBRARY PATH    = ${LIBPATH}"
echo "DEFAULT         = ${DEFAULT}"
echo "Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION:" $(ls -1 "${SEARCHPATH}"/*."${EXTENSION}" | wc -l)
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
    echo "Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:"
    tail -1 "$1"
fi
EOF

chmod +x /tmp/demo-space-separated.sh

/tmp/demo-space-separated.sh -e conf -s /etc -l /usr/lib /etc/hosts

Output from copy-pasting the block above

FILE EXTENSION  = conf
SEARCH PATH     = /etc
LIBRARY PATH    = /usr/lib
DEFAULT         =
Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION: 14
Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:
#93.184.216.34    example.com

Usage

demo-space-separated.sh -e conf -s /etc -l /usr/lib /etc/hosts

Bash Equals-Separated (e.g., --option=argument)

cat >/tmp/demo-equals-separated.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/bash

for i in "$@"; do
  case $i in
    -e=*|--extension=*)
      EXTENSION="${i#*=}"
      shift # past argument=value
      ;;
    -s=*|--searchpath=*)
      SEARCHPATH="${i#*=}"
      shift # past argument=value
      ;;
    -l=*|--lib=*)
      LIBPATH="${i#*=}"
      shift # past argument=value
      ;;
    --default)
      DEFAULT=YES
      shift # past argument with no value
      ;;
    *)
      # unknown option
      ;;
  esac
done
echo "FILE EXTENSION  = ${EXTENSION}"
echo "SEARCH PATH     = ${SEARCHPATH}"
echo "LIBRARY PATH    = ${LIBPATH}"
echo "DEFAULT         = ${DEFAULT}"
echo "Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION:" $(ls -1 "${SEARCHPATH}"/*."${EXTENSION}" | wc -l)
if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
    echo "Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:"
    tail -1 $1
fi
EOF

chmod +x /tmp/demo-equals-separated.sh

/tmp/demo-equals-separated.sh -e=conf -s=/etc -l=/usr/lib /etc/hosts

Output from copy-pasting the block above

FILE EXTENSION  = conf
SEARCH PATH     = /etc
LIBRARY PATH    = /usr/lib
DEFAULT         =
Number files in SEARCH PATH with EXTENSION: 14
Last line of file specified as non-opt/last argument:
#93.184.216.34    example.com

Usage

demo-equals-separated.sh -e=conf -s=/etc -l=/usr/lib /etc/hosts

To better understand ${i#*=} search for "Substring Removal" in this guide. It is functionally equivalent to `sed 's/[^=]*=//' <<< "$i"` which calls a needless subprocess or `echo "$i" | sed 's/[^=]*=//'` which calls two needless subprocesses.

Using bash with getopt[s]

getopt(1) limitations (older, relatively-recent getopt versions):

• can't handle arguments that are empty strings
• can't handle arguments with embedded whitespace

More recent getopt versions don't have these limitations. For more information, see these docs.

POSIX getopts

Additionally, the POSIX shell and others offer getopts which doen't have these limitations. I've included a simplistic getopts example.

cat >/tmp/demo-getopts.sh <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh

# A POSIX variable
OPTIND=1         # Reset in case getopts has been used previously in the shell.

# Initialize our own variables:
output_file=""
verbose=0

while getopts "h?vf:" opt; do
  case "$opt" in
    h|\?)
      show_help
      exit 0
      ;;
    v)  verbose=1
      ;;
    f)  output_file=$OPTARG
      ;;
  esac
done

shift $((OPTIND-1))

[ "${1:-}" = "--" ] && shift

echo "verbose=$verbose, output_file='$output_file', Leftovers: $@"
EOF

chmod +x /tmp/demo-getopts.sh

/tmp/demo-getopts.sh -vf /etc/hosts foo bar

Output from copy-pasting the block above

verbose=1, output_file='/etc/hosts', Leftovers: foo bar

Usage

demo-getopts.sh -vf /etc/hosts foo bar

The advantages of getopts are:

1. It's more portable, and will work in other shells like dash.
2. It can handle multiple single options like -vf filename in the typical Unix way, automatically.

The disadvantage of getopts is that it can only handle short options (-h, not --help) without additional code.

There is a getopts tutorial which explains what all of the syntax and variables mean. In bash, there is also help getopts, which might be informative.

Try tail:

tail -n +2 "$FILE"

-n x: Just print the last x lines. tail -n 5 would give you the last 5 lines of the input. The + sign kind of inverts the argument and make tail print anything but the first x-1 lines. tail -n +1 would print the whole file, tail -n +2 everything but the first line, etc.

GNU tail is much faster than sed. tail is also available on BSD and the -n +2 flag is consistent across both tools. Check the FreeBSD or OS X man pages for more.

The BSD version can be much slower than sed, though. I wonder how they managed that; tail should just read a file line by line while sed does pretty complex operations involving interpreting a script, applying regular expressions and the like.

Note: You may be tempted to use

# THIS WILL GIVE YOU AN EMPTY FILE!
tail -n +2 "$FILE" > "$FILE"

but this will give you an empty file. The reason is that the redirection (>) happens before tail is invoked by the shell:

1. Shell truncates file $FILE
2. Shell creates a new process for tail
3. Shell redirects stdout of the tail process to $FILE
4. tail reads from the now empty $FILE

If you want to remove the first line inside the file, you should use:

tail -n +2 "$FILE" > "$FILE.tmp" && mv "$FILE.tmp" "$FILE"

The && will make sure that the file doesn't get overwritten when there is a problem.