AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

Topic List Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basic shell script . . . . . . . . . . . . Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Useful variable values . . . . . . . . . . Constructing strings . . . . . . . . . . Logical expressions and le inquiry . . . . File inquiry and logical operators . . . . . Making choices (if and switch) . . . . . . Positional parameters . . . . . . . . . . Looping: foreach, while . . . . . . . . . eval commmand . . . . . . . . . . . . Doing math . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Built-in math . . . . . . . . . . . . . continue, break . . . . . . . . . . . . nd command . . . . . . . . . . . . . Useful nd options . . . . . . . . . . . In-line input redirection or here documents source command . . . . . . . . . . . . exit command . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stream manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 3 6 7 8 8 10 16 18 22 23 24 25 26 26 27 28 29 29

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

[This is intended to be a tutorial on scripting in the C shell csh. The interested reader is referred to Anderson, The Unix C Shell Field Guide, and similar texts.]

C Shell (csh) Programming

The C shell csh and its derivatives are popular shells that have syntax similar to the C programming language.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

The following are two examples of a simple shell script. As the reader can see, this is a series of commands to change to the users $HOME directory, create a subdirectory, and print out the line from the env command containing the string PATH; the reader could execute these same series of commands from the command line.

Basic shell script #!/bin/csh cd $HOME mkdir foo env | grep PATH or #!/bin/csh cd $HOME ; mkdir foo env | \ grep PATH Note: commands can be separated by a newline character or ;. \ is used for line continuations.
The rst line in the le #!/bin/csh tells the shell what interpreter to use with the script as input. Due to space considerations, the #!/bin/csh line will be omitted in the examples as they are code snippets. The second example demonstrates the use of ; to combine commands on the same line and \ to split command lines on multiple lines. Any text following a # character is treated as a comment. These scripts must have the execute-bit enabled (chmod u+x lename) to execute these scripts as commands.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

The utilities expr and nd will be used in the examples. These utilities have individual man pages.

The following are a few utility commands that will be used in subsequent examples. expr integer arithmetic operations nd locates les with specic attributes

As with other programming languages, variables provide a means of storing and recalling data via a naming scheme.

Variables name must begin with a letter or character, followed by zero or more letters, numbers, and characters. Assignment: set name = value set name[n] = value set name = (value-1 . . . value-N) Environment variable: setenv name value Value: $name $name[index] Replaces with value: $name, $name, `$name` No change: \$name, $name
The three variations of the set command assign to a shell variable, the nth element of a list variable, and a list variable respectively. These variables are only dened in the current shell process. setenv assigns values to environment variables, which are passed to subshells or child shells. The value of a shell or environment variable is referenced by prepending a $ to the name. Note that using double quotes (") or grav quotes (`) expands to the variables e value whereas escaping the $ or using single quotes () does not. Due to variable modiers (not discussed), enclosing the name of the variable in braces ({}) avoids accidental interpretations when combining variable values and :s.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

The example illustrates the various methods of assigning and using shell variables, with the output following. The pwd command outputs the full path of the current directory. The echo command prints its arguments to standard output. The env command prints out the names and values of the environment variables in the current shell process. The grep command prints out occurrences of its rst argument in its input (standard input in the example).

Example: comparing shell and environment variables pwd set foo = Value of foo setenv AKIRA pwd echo $foo $AKIRA echo \$foo $AKIRA echo $AKIRA env | grep AKIRA env | grep foo Result: /home/user Value of foo pwd $foo $AKIRA /home/user AKIRA=pwd <blank line>

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

The script: 1) outputs the full path of the current directory, 2) assigns values to the shell variables foo and AKIRA, 3) makes AKIRA an environment variable which is available to child processes, 4) outputs the various forms of the two shell variables, and 5) outputs matches of the two shell variables in the enviroment variable output. The rst line of the output is the full path of the current directory. The second line of the output is the concatenation of the values of the two shell variables. This shows that both the unquoted form and quoting with double quotes ("") expands to the value of the shell variable. The third line of output are the variable names preceded by a $ character. Escaping (preceding by \) the $ or enclosing in single quotes () prevents expansion to the value of the shell variable. This form is useful if $ does not precede a valid shell variable name, e.g., currency expressions. Delayed expansion is also useful when the shell variable has no value in the current shell process (e.g., writing out a shell script, executing a command on a remote system). The fourth line of output is the full path of the current directory. The grav quotes e (``) execute the value of the shell variable as a command in a subshell. Here, $AKIRA expands to pwd, and the output of the command is stored as a string. The last two lines of output (the last line is blank) show that AKIRA was dened as an environment variable whereas foo was not.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

The following is a list of common shell variables. Some of these will be used in later examples.

Useful variable values $PATH $LD LIBRARY PATH $MANPATH $HOME $USER $PWD $status $$ $0 $1$9 $argv[1]$argv[9] $#argv $* colon-separated list of directories in which to search for commands colon-separated list of directories in which to search for shared objects colon-separated list of directories in which to search for man pages users home directory login name full path of current directory exit status value of last command executed process id (PID) of the current process name of called script up to the rst nine positional parameters count of positional parameters (can be larger than nine) string of all the positional parameters

Note that argv is a variable list. The range of indices is 1 to $#argv.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

Constructing strings Assume that the value $foo is the string JIRO, the value $bar is the string mohmoh-rehnjah, and the value $null is the empty string () in the following examples. Expression: $foo5 Equivalent: [undened variable] Expression: ${foo}5 Equivalent: JIRO5 Expression: x$bar Equivalent: xmohmoh-renjah Expression: x$null Equivalent: x$null [no expansion] Expression: $bar has explosive jewelry. $bar has explosive jewelry. Equivalent: mohmoh-renjah has explosive jewelry. Expression: `echo ${foo}5$null` Equivalent: JIRO5 [result of echo evaluation]
These examples demonstrate constructions of strings which combine literal strings and shell variable values. Except in the case of characters that have special meaning in the shell (e.g., spaces, dollar signs), quoting in strings is not necessary. However, quoting does avoid errors with strings used as operands. The rst two examples demonstrate the wrong and correct methods of concatenating a shell variable value and an alphanumeric string. Since foo5 is a valid variable name, $foo5 is syntactically correct even though the variable has no value. By surrounding the name with braces, the shell interpreter expands the value $foo, and concatenates the string 5 to it. In the third example, the value $bar is concatenated to the string x. In this case, the braces are not needed. The fourth example shows that single quotes prevent expansion of shell variable values. The fth example shows equivalent combinations of shell variable values and literal strings. Although the sixth example is contrived, it shows that any of the constructed strings are valid arguments to commands

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

Logical expressions and le inquiry The if and while constructs use the results of conditional expressions or integer values to make decisions. The logical operators are similar to their C counterparts. In addition, the le inquiry operators determine properties of their le arguments.
As in the C programming language, not-zero is true, and 0 is false. This convention is the opposite of the Unix return values 0 (success/true) and not-zero (failure/false).

File inquiry and logical operators -f value -d value -z value -r value -w value -x value ==, != ==, !=, <, <=, >, >= ! &&, || (,) true if value is an ordinary le true if value is a directory true if le value is empty true if $USER has read-permission on le value true if $USER has write-permission on le value true if $USER has execute-permission on le value string comparison operators integer comparison operators negation operator logical AND, OR group expressions to increase precedence

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

Examples: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. $LIBPATH == -x /bar/RECORD.USAGE $LD LIBRARY PATH != $# > 0 ! -d ./foo

Explanation: 1. true if $LIBPATH is the empty string () 2. true if /bar/RECORD.USAGE is an executable le 3. true if $LD LIBRARY PATH is not the empty string () 4. true if the number of command-line arguments is greater than zero (0) 5. true if ./foo is not a directory

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

Making choices (if and switch): if (expression) command if (expression) then command-1 . [. . command-N ] [ else if (expression) then command-1 . [. . command-N ] ] [ else command-1 . [. . command-N ] ] endif The if construct sequentially evaluates each expression until 1) one evaluates as true, 2) the else clause is reached, or 3) endif (end of the construct) is reached. For cases 1) and 2), all commands are executed up to the next else if, else, or endif.

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In the example, the tty command checks if the standard input stream is connected to a terminal without generating output. The return value $status is checked (0 is success/true in Unix, but false in C), and the erase character is set to control-H, or backspace, if the conditional expression is true.

Example: This sets the erase character to backspace only when connected to a terminal; stty will give an error when the stdin is not a terminal. tty tests stdin. tty -s if (! $status) then stty erase H endif
This snippet is useful in .login le which is executed at the beginning of a login session; the clause prevents execution for non-interactive logins such as batch processing.

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switch (value) case case-a1: . [. . case case-aN: ] action-1 . . [. action-N ] breaksw . . [. case case-N1: . . [. case case-NN: ] command-1 . . [. command-N ] breaksw ] [ default: command-1 . . [. command-N ] breaksw ] endsw Note: value is typically the value of a variable ($name) or the output of a command (`command`) where the grave (`) turns the output of a command into a string. breaksw denotes the end of the actions for the group of cases. value is compared to all of the case-* terms; if a match is found, the commands up to the terminating breaksw are executed. If no match is found, the default default is matched, if it exists, and the associated commands are executed.

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The command ping gives a simple test of connectivity to a remote machine. The command rsh allows command execution on remote machines if user $USER has login access. However, dierent operating systems have diering full paths to these utilities. The following example is one method to simplify this process for use later in a script.

Example: Sets shell variables with full pathnames for ping and rsh set OS = `uname -s` switch ($OS) case IRIX*: set PING = /usr/etc/ping set RSH = /usr/bsd/rsh breaksw case OSF1*: case SunOS*: set PING = /usr/sbin/ping set RSH = /usr/bin/rsh breaksw case Linux*: set PING = /bin/ping set RSH = /usr/bin/rsh breaksw default: echo Unknown operating system exit 1 breaksw endsw

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The output of the uname command gives the operating system name; this is assigned to the shell variable OS. This switch construct selects the values to assign to the shell variables PING and RSH for the operating systems that it recognizes. The value $OS is compared to the various case strings; the * in all the cases matches any string. The default case matches any case not previously matched. By assigning values to shell variables, the commands that follow this switch construct can use the values of the shell variables as opposed to the actual full pathnames. Thus, the same script can function on multiple machines minimizing maintenance errors.

As with other programming languages, switch constructs can be the body of if constructs, and vice versa. The following snippet rst checks whether the value $CPU is the empty string. If the value is the empty string, the output of the hostname command is compared to the cases. Here both the *, which matches zero or more characters, and the range operator (here denoting a digit) are used in the patterns to match. If a pattern matches, CPU is assigned the associated value. If no pattern matches, a message is printed to standard output, and the script exits.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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Example: A method to set the CPU environment variable for known machines if ($CPU == ) then switch (`hostname`) case aaa-[0-9]*: case bbb-[0-9]*: setenv CPU alpha breaksw case ccc-[0-9]*: setenv CPU beta breaksw case ddd: setenv CPU gamma breaksw default: echo `hostname` does not dene CPU environment \ variable echo Contact user@host.domain about this \ problem exit 1 breaksw endsw endif

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Positional parameters At a basic level, the positional parameter values $1 . . . $9, $argv, and $*, and their respective count $# are the references to the command-line arguments of the script; $0 is the name of command that invoked the script. The initial nine positional parameter values (where applicable) are referenced by the values $1 . . . $9. If more than nine (9) positional parameters exist, the remaining positional parameters can be moved into the $1 ... $9 values using the shift command with no argument; with a variable list name as an argument, the elements of the variable list are shifted. In either case, the rst element is lost, and all elements shift to the left (lower index) by one position. Alternatively, $argv[k] references the kth argument where k ranges from 1 to $# (or $#argv).
As with other variable lists, the elements of argv can be referenced as $argv[num] where num ranges from 1 to $# (or $#argv). To illustrate the use of the shift command, the list of positional parameter values is considered to be a space-separated list with the lowest index on the left. The command shift [variable-name] will shift all the elements in the list variable-name (or the positional parameters if no argument is present) by one position to the left, losing the value to the left of the rst position. In addition, $# is decremented by one as well.

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This example demonstrates the passing of command-line arguments to another command. This snippet could be used in a wrapper script where the setup operations or logging might be incorporated in addition to executing the command. As these operations would generally execute in a subshell, the calling shell environment would not be aected.

Example: Passing the command-line arguments to another command. command=`basename $0` # Gets name of command /software/$CPU/bin/$command $*
The assignment of command uses the basename command to get the name of the script as it was called, less any directory path information. The grav quotes (``) change the e output of the command into a string for the assignment. In a wrapper script, the value $0 would be the symbolic link associated with the actual script, e.g., the link snafu created by ln -s wrapper.sh snafu would start the executable (/software/$CPU/bin/snafu when invoked. This allows one script to create a consistent operating environment for multiple related executables.

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Looping: foreach, while foreach name (value-1 . . . value-N) command-1 . . . command-N end For each iteration of the loop, variable name is successively assigned value-1 through value-N, and the commands in the body are executed. while (expression) command-1 . . . command-N end The while construct loops over the commands between the while and end as long as expression is true.

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Example: This example creates links which associate commands with a wrapper script. cd /base $CPU foreach le (`cd /software/$CPU/bin ; ls`) if (! -f $le) then ln -s /software/scripts/app.sh $le endif end
After changing to the directory for the links, the foreach loop iterates over the names of executable les; by changing to the directory before executing the directory listing, only the lenames are output. Note: the commands within the grav quotes are executed in a e subshell, and do not directly aect the current process. To avoid error messages from ln, an if construct checks that the link does not already exist. The wrapper script (called /software/scripts/app.sh) is linked with the name of an executable binary ($le).

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Example: Changes the uppercase letters in the names of a group of les to lowercase foreach le (`ls`) set new le = `echo $le | tr [A-Z] [a-z]` if ($new le != $le) then mv $le $new le endif end
$le successively takes values of the lenames in the current directory. new le is assigned the value $le with all the uppercase letters changed to their lowercase equivalent; as tr only works on streams, the value $le is echoed and piped to tr. The values $new le and $le are compared. If they are not equal, the le $le is renamed $new le. Both $le and $new le are quoted as a precaution against emptystring values. This example demonstrates the while loop which terminates when its condition returns false (not 0).

Example: Iteratively operating on positional parameters while ($# > 0) echo $1 shift end
$# is the number of positional parameters, so the loop continues as long as it is non-zero. For each loop iteration, the rst parameter ($1) is output, and each parameter is moved one position down with $1 being discarded. $# is updated with each shift command. Although this loop only prints out each parameter, the action could be more involved such as moving les or processing terms.
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The outer loop continues until the value $STATE is 0 (success in Unix).

Example: Getting a successful le transfer set STATE = -1 while ($STATE != 0) rcp foo.dat host:/home/user set STATE = $status if ($STATE != 0) then kinit -l 10h while ($status != 0) kinit -l 10h end endif end
The outer loop continues until the value $STATE is 0. Note: the value $STATE is initialized to be not 0. The body of the outer loop: 1) tries to copy a le to a remote host, 2) assigns the return value of the copy command to STATE, and 3) performs additional processing if the copy failed (value $STATE is not 0). The assumption to continue processing is that the remote copy command rcp should only fail in a recoverable way: if there are no valid credentials (loss of network connectivity is not a recoverable error). Thus, when a failure occurs, the loop executes until the credentials have been established. Note: the expressions $name != 0 could also be written $name as not-zero is true.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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eval command When performing the same operation on a collection of variables, it is convenient to use the looping structures that work when the value of a variable is allowed to change. The eval command evaluates its argument, then executes the expanded string as a command. Example: sets the value of the variable to its name foreach match (rusage select test) eval set $match = $match end
This apparently trivial example demonstrates the utility of the eval command. The value of $match is successively set to three values. On the left-hand-side of the assignment, the unquoted string expands to the value $match. On the right-hand-side of the assignment, the single quotes prevent expansion of $match. So, before applying eval, the argument would look like (for $match being rusage): set rusage = $match which is clearly an illegal form. eval removes one level of quoting, and evaluates the result. Thus the command to evaluate would be: set rusage = $match From this trivial example, other sources might be used to assign $match. As this is the variable name to be assigned, a similar eval statement would assign a changing variable name to a string. The variation eval set ${match}1 = $$match would expand to the command set rusage1 = $rusage allowing one to assign other variables via the loop.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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Doing math For integer math, there are built in commands as well as the expr command. Note: the multiplication operator is \, not *, as the latter is special to all shells. expr has additional operators besides the usual math operators.
The expr command takes as its arguments the expression to be evaluated where the operands and operators are space-separated. Although other operators are noted in the man pages, for this discussion, only the mathematical operators +, -, \, /, and % are considered.

This example tests the scalability of an MPI program. The program foo is assumed to be an MPI executable that can be started by the command mpirun.

Example: scaling test set count = 1 while ($count <= 128) mpirun -np $count foo set count = `expr $count \ 2` end
The variable count stores the processor count, and begins at 1. The loop continues while the value $count is less than or equal to 128. For each loop iteration, foo is run on $count processors, then count is assigned the value of twice $count. As seen in previous examples, the grav quotes (`) change a commands e output into a string, and do not prevent expansion of shell variables.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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Built-in math The format @ variable-name operator expression where spaces between the @ and variable-name, and between variable-name and operator are required; spaces are recommended for clarity. operator can be the usual C assignment operators (=, +=, -=, *=, /=) as well as postincrement/decrement (++, ). expression can be a variable value or integer expression. Example: scaling test (built-in math) @ count = 1 while ($count <= 128) mpirun -np $count foo @ count *= 2 end

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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continue, break It is convenient to avoid executing all the commands in a loop if some condition is met. continue stops the current iteration of a loop and moves to the next one. break terminates the current loop. Example: Changes the uppercase letters in the names of a group of les to lowercase (using continue) foreach le (`ls`) set new le = `echo $le | tr [A-Z] [a-z]` if ($new le == $le) then continue endif mv $le $new le end
$le successively takes values of the lenames in the current directory. new le is assigned the value of $le with all the uppercase letters changed to their lowercase equivalent; as tr only works on streams, the value of $le is echoed and piped to tr. The values $le and $new le are compared. If they match, no change is necessary, and the continue statement returns control to the top of the loop. Otherwise, the lename changes to $new le. This is a rewriting of a previous example to illustrate the use of the continue statement.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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nd command The nd command is useful for locating les with specic attributes. By default, nd generates a list of les that match the search criterion. The -exec option species a command to execute where {} denotes the current match; the argument to -exec must be terminated by \;.
The reader should reference the man pages for nd.

Useful nd options: -name lename-specication -perm permission-specication -ctime number-of-days -mtime number-of-days -atime number-of-days -type type-specication -exec command \; ! option \(, \) option-1 -a option-2 option-1 -o option-2 nds lenames matching the specication nds les with matching permissions nds les with creation, modication, access times in number-of-days days nds les of the specied type executes command with {} (the current match) as an argument. negates its argument groups options both specications must be true for match either specication must be true for match

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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nd . -name *.c

# Finds C source les

# Changes permissions to allow group/world read access nd /software/ -perm 0600 -exec chmod go+r {} \;

The rst example locates les that end in .c. As * is special to the shell, it is quoted so that the wildcard is not expanded, but passed to nd as a parameter. The second example nds les in the directory /software that have only user read-write permissions. The identied les then have group and other read permissions added. In the chmod command associated with the -exec option, {} refers to the found le, and \; indicates the end of the command.

In-line input redirection or here documents Although the stdin for a command can be redirected from a le, it is useful in a script to have the data in the script as opposed to depending on a le. Here documents provide this functionality. command <<ag line-1 . . . line-N ag All the lines up to the line containing only ag are through stdin for command. Note: no spaces between << and ag. All shell variables are expanded by default unless ag is preceded by a \.

Instead of reading from standard input, this example uses a here document for input. An advantage to this is that it is does not require the user to interactively enter the message, and allows a combination of static data with dynamic content (this could be done in a loop over valid users).
AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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Any command that reads from the standard input stream can potentially have a here document as an alternative to an input le.

Example: mails notice to user if (! -f $HOME/.login) then mail -s Missing $HOME/.login $USER <<EOF Dear user $USER: Alert: the le $HOME/.login is missing. System administrator EOF
This example checks for a login startup le, and mails a note to the user if the le does not exist.

source command The source command executes its argument, a valid shell script, in the current shell. Thus, unlike executing the shell script by itself, it eects changes in the current shell as opposed to running in a child shell. The source command is useful for modifying the current processs environment or adding aliases.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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exit command exit exit(expression) The exit command terminates the current shell script at the point at which it is executed rather than allowing it to complete. If an optional argument expression is included, it returns an exit status of the value of expression; otherwise, it returns the exit status of the last command executed before exit. exit is useful for aborting the shell script if problems occur.

stream manipulation foo | more # stdout piped into pager foo |& more # stdout and stderr piped into pager bar >foo # stdout redirected to a le bar > &foo # stdout and stderr redirected to a le
The rst example demonstrates piping the standard out stream, and the standard out and error streams together. In the rst case, only standard out would be connected by the pipe to the less command. In the second case both streams are connected to the standard input of the command. The second example demonstrates the similar combinations for le redirection.

AFRL MSRC C Shell (csh) Programming Tutorial

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