Shell scripts are a fundamental part of the OS X programming environment. As a ubiquitous feature of UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, they represent a way of writing certain types of command-line tools in a way that works on a fairly broad spectrum of computing platforms.

Not only can you practice, you can actually do Unix shell scripting on a Mac. As Erik pointed out, 'Terminal' in the Applications:Utilities folder is a CLI that uses one of three standard Unix shells: Bash, tcsh, or zsh. Bash is probably the mos. A shell is a command-line interpreter and typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. Extended Shell Scripts. Shell scripts have several required constructs that tell the shell environment what to do and when to do it. Of course, most scripts are more complex than the above one.

Because shell scripts are written in an interpreted language whose power comes from executing external programs to perform processing tasks, their performance can be somewhat limited. However, because they can execute without any additional effort on nearly any modern operating system, they represent a powerful tool for bootstrapping other technologies. For example, the autoconf tool, used for configuring software prior to compilation, is a series of shell scripts.

You should read this document if you are interested in learning the basics of shell scripting. This document assumes that you already have some basic understanding of at least one procedural programming language such as C. It does not assume that you have very much knowledge of commands executed from the terminal, though, and thus should be readable even if you have never run the Terminal application before.

The techniques in this document are not specific to OS X, although this document does note various quirks of certain command-line utilities in various operating systems. In particular, it includes information about some cases where the OS X versions of command-line utilities behave differently than other commonly available versions such as the GNU equivalents commonly used in Linux and some BSD systems.

This document is not intended to be a complete reference for shell scripting, as such a subject could fill entire libraries. However, it is intended to provide enough information to get you started writing and comprehending shell scripts. Along the way, it provides links to documentation for various additional tools that you may find useful when writing shell scripts.

For your convenience, many of the scripts in this document are also included in the “Companion File” Zip archive. You can find this archive in the heading area when viewing this document in HTML form on the developer.apple.com website.

Organization of This Document

This document is organized as a series of topics. These topics can be read linearly as a tutorial, but are also organized with the intent to be a quick reference on key subjects.

• Before You Begin—explains how to get a command prompt in OS X and other operating systems, provides pointers to documentation about using the command line interactively, and provides useful command-line tips (such as how to enter control characters).

• Shell Script Basics—introduces basic concepts of shell scripting, including variables, control statements, file I/O, pipes, redirection, and argument handling.

• Subroutines, Scoping, and Sourcing—describes how to obtain result codes from outside executables, how to write and call subroutines, subroutine variable scoping rules, how to include one shell script inside another (sourcing), and how to use job control to run tasks in the background.

• Paint by Numbers—explains how to use integer math in shell scripts. This section also explains how to use the bc command-line utility or Perl to handle more complex math, such as floating-point calculations.

• Regular Expressions Unfettered—describes basic and extended regular expressions and how to use them. This section also describes the differences between these regular expression dialects and the dialect supported by Perl, and shows how to use Perl regular expressions through inline scripting.

• How AWK-ward—explains the AWK command, which provides a data-driven programming language based on regular expressions and tabular data.

• Designing Scripts for Cross-Platform Deployment—describes key differences in the shell scripting environments provided by various operating systems and provides tips for writing portable scripts.

• Advanced Techniques—shows you how to simulate data structures and pointers, perform nonblocking I/O, write timing loops, trap signals, use special built-in shell variables, draw styled text using ANSI color and formatting commands, find the absolute path of a script, use osascript to manipulate graphical applications, and use file descriptors and named pipes to treat command-line tools as filters.

• Performance Tuning—describes techniques for improving the performance of complex scripts.

• Other Tools and Information—provides a basic summary of various commands that may be useful to shell script developers, including links to OS X documentation for each of them.

• Starting Points—provides several sample shell scripts and snippets that automate real-world tasks. This appendix also provides links to other complete examples elsewhere in the book.

• An Extreme Example: The Monte Carlo (Bourne) Method for Pi—provides a complex example to showcase the power of shell scripts to perform complex tasks (slowly). The code example shows a shell script implementation of the Monte Carlo method for approximating the value of Pi. The code example takes advantage of a number of numerical and string handling techniques described in the previous chapters. By showing some of the same calculations written in multiple ways, it also illustrates why it is often beneficial, performance-wise, to embed scripts written in other languages such as Perl or AWK when attempting tasks that suit those languages better.

Happy scripting!

Copyright © 2003, 2014 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Updated: 2014-03-10

A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by the Unix shell, a command-line interpreter.^[1] The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. A script which sets up the environment, runs the program, and does any necessary cleanup, logging, etc. is called a wrapper.

The term is also used more generally to mean the automated mode of running an operating system shell; in specific operating systems they are called other things such as batch files (MSDos-Win95 stream, OS/2), command procedures (VMS), and shell scripts (Windows NT stream and third-party derivatives like 4NT—article is at cmd.exe), and mainframe operating systems are associated with a number of terms.

The typical Unix/Linux/POSIX-compliant installation includes the KornShell (ksh) in several possible versions such as ksh88, Korn Shell '93 and others. The oldest shell still in common use is the Bourne shell (sh); Unix systems invariably also include the C shell (csh), Bash (bash), a Remote Shell (rsh), a Secure Shell (ssh) for SSLtelnet connections, and a shell which is a main component of the Tcl/Tk installation usually called tclsh; wish is a GUI-based Tcl/Tk shell. The C and Tcl shells have syntax quite similar to that of said programming languages, and the Korn shells and Bash are developments of the Bourne shell, which is based on the ALGOL language with elements of a number of others added as well.^[2] On the other hand, the various shells plus tools like awk, sed, grep, and BASIC, Lisp, C and so forth contributed to the Perl programming language.^[3]

Other shells available on a machine or available for download and/or purchase include Almquist shell (ash), PowerShell (msh), Z shell (zsh, a particularly common enhanced KornShell), the Tenex C Shell (tcsh), a Perl-like shell (psh). Related programs such as shells based on Python, Ruby, C, Java, Perl, Pascal, Rexx &c in various forms are also widely available. Another somewhat common shell is osh, whose manual page states it 'is an enhanced, backward-compatible port of the standard command interpreter from Sixth Edition UNIX.'^[4]

Windows-Unix interoperability software such as the MKS Toolkit, Cygwin, UWIN, Interix and others make the above shells and Unix programming available on Windows systems, providing functionality all the way down to signals and other inter-process communication, system calls and APIs. The Hamilton C shell is a Windows shell that is very similar to the Unix C Shell. Microsoft distributed Windows Services for UNIX for use with its NT-based operating systems in particular, which have a POSIX environmental subsystem.

Capabilities[edit]

Comments[edit]

Comments are ignored by the shell. They typically begin with the hash symbol (#), and continue until the end of the line.^[5]

Configurable choice of scripting language[edit]

The shebang, or hash-bang, is a special kind of comment which the system uses to determine what interpreter to use to execute the file. The shebang must be the first line of the file, and start with '#!'.^[5] In Unix-like operating systems, the characters following the '#!' prefix are interpreted as a path to an executable program that will interpret the script.^[6]

Software for recording on pc. Logic Pro X turns your Mac into a professional recording studio able to handle even the most demanding projects. Capture your compositions and performances — from tracking a live band to a solo software-instrument session — and flow them into your songs. The ultimate way to record. Free or Open Source Screen Recording Software for Macs 1. OBS Studio is a popular open source Mac recording software tool that works well for live streaming games. Monosnap is a free and highly-rated screenshot editor that you can download from the Mac App Store.

Shortcuts[edit]

A shell script can provide a convenient variation of a system command where special environment settings, command options, or post-processing apply automatically, but in a way that allows the new script to still act as a fully normal Unix command.

One example would be to create a version of ls, the command to list files, giving it a shorter command name of l, which would be normally saved in a user's bin directory as /home/username/bin/l, and a default set of command options pre-supplied.

Here, the first line uses a shebang to indicate which interpreter should execute the rest of the script, and the second line makes a listing with options for file format indicators, columns, all files (none omitted), and a size in blocks. The LC_COLLATE=C sets the default collation order to not fold upper and lower case together, not intermix dotfiles with normal filenames as a side effect of ignoring punctuation in the names (dotfiles are usually only shown if an option like -a is used), and the '$@' causes any parameters given to l to pass through as parameters to ls, so that all of the normal options and other syntax known to ls can still be used.

The user could then simply use l for the most commonly used short listing.

Another example of a shell script that could be used as a shortcut would be to print a list of all the files and directories within a given directory.

In this case, the shell script would start with its normal starting line of #!/bin/sh. Following this, the script executes the command clear which clears the terminal of all text before going to the next line. The following line provides the main function of the script. The ls -al command lists the files and directories that are in the directory from which the script is being run. The ls command attributes could be changed to reflect the needs of the user.

Note: If an implementation does not have the clear command, try using the clr command instead.

Batch jobs[edit]

Shell scripts allow several commands that would be entered manually at a command-line interface to be executed automatically, and without having to wait for a user to trigger each stage of the sequence. For example, in a directory with three C source code files, rather than manually running the four commands required to build the final program from them, one could instead create a script for POSIX-compliant shells, here named build and kept in the directory with them, which would compile them automatically:

The script would allow a user to save the file being edited, pause the editor, and then just run ./build to create the updated program, test it, and then return to the editor. Since the 1980s or so, however, scripts of this type have been replaced with utilities like make which are specialized for building programs.

Generalization[edit]

Simple batch jobs are not unusual for isolated tasks, but using shell loops, tests, and variables provides much more flexibility to users. A POSIX sh script to convert JPEG images to PNG images, where the image names are provided on the command-line—possibly via wildcards—instead of each being listed within the script, can be created with this file, typically saved in a file like /home/username/bin/jpg2png

The jpg2png command can then be run on an entire directory full of JPEG images with just /home/username/bin/jpg2png *.jpg

Verisimilitude[edit]

A key feature of shell scripts is that the invocation of their interpreters is handled as a core operating system feature. So rather than a user's shell only being able to execute scripts in that shell's language, or a script only having its interpreter directive handled correctly if it was run from a shell (both of which were limitations in the early Bourne shell's handling of scripts), shell scripts are set up and executed by the OS itself. A modern shell script is not just on the same footing as system commands, but rather many system commands are actually shell scripts (or more generally, scripts, since some of them are not interpreted by a shell, but instead by Perl, Python, or some other language). This extends to returning exit codes like other system utilities to indicate success or failure, and allows them to be called as components of larger programs regardless of how those larger tools are implemented.^[7][8]

Like standard system commands, shell scripts classically omit any kind of filename extension unless intended to be read into a running shell through a special mechanism for this purpose (such as sh’s '. ', or csh’s source).^[9][10]

Programming[edit]

Many modern shells also supply various features usually found only in more sophisticated general-purpose programming languages, such as control-flow constructs, variables, comments, arrays, subroutines and so on. With these sorts of features available, it is possible to write reasonably sophisticated applications as shell scripts. However, they are still limited by the fact that most shell languages have little or no support for data typing systems, classes, threading, complex math, and other common full language features, and are also generally much slower than compiled code or interpreted languages written with speed as a performance goal.

Audio cd copy for mac. The standard Unix tools sed and awk provide extra capabilities for shell programming; Perl can also be embedded in shell scripts as can other scripting languages like Tcl. Perl and Tcl come with graphics toolkits as well.

Other scripting languages[edit]

Many powerful scripting languages have been introduced for tasks that are too large or complex to be comfortably handled with ordinary shell scripts, but for which the advantages of a script are desirable and the development overhead of a full-blown, compiled programming language would be disadvantageous. The specifics of what separates scripting languages from high-level programming languages is a frequent source of debate, but, generally speaking, a scripting language is one which requires an interpreter.

Life cycle[edit]

Shell scripts often serve as an initial stage in software development, and are often subject to conversion later to a different underlying implementation, most commonly being converted to Perl, Python, or C. The interpreter directive allows the implementation detail to be fully hidden inside the script, rather than being exposed as a filename extension, and provides for seamless reimplementation in different languages with no impact on end users.

While files with the '.sh' file extension are usually a shell script of some kind, most shell scripts do not have any filename extension.^[11][12]

Advantages and disadvantages[edit]

Perhaps the biggest advantage of writing a shell script is that the commands and syntax are exactly the same as those directly entered at the command-line. The programmer does not have to switch to a totally different syntax, as they would if the script were written in a different language, or if a compiled language were used.

Often, writing a shell script is much quicker than writing the equivalent code in other programming languages. The many advantages include easy program or file selection, quick start, and interactive debugging. A shell script can be used to provide a sequencing and decision-making linkage around existing programs, and for moderately sized scripts the absence of a compilation step is an advantage. Interpretive running makes it easy to write debugging code into a script and re-run it to detect and fix bugs. Non-expert users can use scripting to tailor the behavior of programs, and shell scripting provides some limited scope for multiprocessing.

On the other hand, shell scripting is prone to costly errors. Inadvertent typing errors such as rm -rf * / (instead of the intended rm -rf */) are folklore in the Unix community; a single extra space converts the command from one that deletes everything in the sub-directories to one which deletes everything—and also tries to delete everything in the root directory. Similar problems can transform cp and mv into dangerous weapons, and misuse of the > redirect can delete the contents of a file. This is made more problematic by the fact that many UNIX commands differ in name by only one letter: cp, cd, dd, df, etc.

Bash Shell Script For Mac

Another significant disadvantage is the slow execution speed and the need to launch a new process for almost every shell command executed. When a script's job can be accomplished by setting up a pipeline in which efficient filter commands perform most of the work, the slowdown is mitigated, but a complex script is typically several orders of magnitude slower than a conventional compiled program that performs an equivalent task.

There are also compatibility problems between different platforms. Larry Wall, creator of Perl, famously wrote that 'It is easier to port a shell than a shell script.'^{[This quote needs a citation]}

Similarly, more complex scripts can run into the limitations of the shell scripting language itself; the limits make it difficult to write quality code, and extensions by various shells to ameliorate problems with the original shell language can make problems worse.^[13]

Many disadvantages of using some script languages are caused by design flaws within the language syntax or implementation, and are not necessarily imposed by the use of a text-based command-line; there are a number of shells which use other shell programming languages or even full-fledged languages like Scsh (which uses Scheme).

Shell Script For Mac Download

Shell scripting on other operating systems[edit]

Interoperability software such as Cygwin, the MKS Toolkit, Interix (which is available in the Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX), Hamilton C shell, UWIN (AT&T Unix for Windows) and others allow Unix shell programs to be run on machines running Windows NT and its successors, with some loss of functionality on the MS-DOS-Windows 95 branch, as well as earlier MKS Toolkit versions for OS/2. At least three DCL implementations for Windows type operating systems—in addition to XLNT, a multiple-use scripting language package which is used with the command shell, Windows Script Host and CGI programming—are available for these systems as well. Mac OS X and subsequent are Unix-like as well.^[14]

In addition to the aforementioned tools, some POSIX and OS/2 functionality can be used with the corresponding environmental subsystems of the Windows NT operating system series up to Windows 2000 as well. A third, 16-bit subsystem often called the MS-DOS subsystem uses the Command.com provided with these operating systems to run the aforementioned MS-DOS batch files.^[15]

Freemake for Mac? Freemake DOESN'T support Mac. Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate for Mac is an all-in-one Freemake for Mac alternative that can replace many Freemake products such as Freemake video converter, Freemake video downloader, Freemake audio converter, etc. The key features of this Freemake for Mac alternative includes: 1.

The console alternatives 4DOS, 4OS2, FreeDOS, Peter Norton's NDOS and 4NT / Take Command which add functionality to the Windows NT-style cmd.exe, MS-DOS/Windows 95 batch files (run by Command.com), OS/2's cmd.exe, and 4NT respectively are similar to the shells that they enhance and are more integrated with the Windows Script Host, which comes with three pre-installed engines, VBScript, JScript, and VBA and to which numerous third-party engines can be added, with Rexx, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Tcl having pre-defined functions in 4NT and related programs. PC DOS is quite similar to MS-DOS, whilst DR DOS is more different. Earlier versions of Windows NT are able to run contemporary versions of 4OS2 by the OS/2 subsystem.

Scripting languages are, by definition, able to be extended; for example, a MS-DOS/Windows 95/98 and Windows NT type systems allows for shell/batch programs to call tools like KixTart, QBasic, various BASIC, Rexx, Perl, and Python implementations, the Windows Script Host and its installed engines. On Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems, awk and sed are used to extend the string and numeric processing ability of shell scripts. Tcl, Perl, Rexx, and Python have graphics toolkits and can be used to code functions and procedures for shell scripts which pose a speed bottleneck (C, Fortran, assembly language &c are much faster still) and to add functionality not available in the shell language such as sockets and other connectivity functions, heavy-duty text processing, working with numbers if the calling script does not have those abilities, self-writing and self-modifying code, techniques like recursion, direct memory access, various types of sorting and more, which are difficult or impossible in the main script, and so on. Visual Basic for Applications and VBScript can be used to control and communicate with such things as spreadsheets, databases, scriptable programs of all types, telecommunications software, development tools, graphics tools and other software which can be accessed through the Component Object Model.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Kernighan, Brian W.; Pike, Rob (1984), '3. Using the Shell', The UNIX Programming Environment, Prentice Hall, Inc., p. 94, ISBN0-13-937699-2, The shell is actually a programming language: it has variables, loops, decision-making, and so on.
2. ^Unix Shells By Example, pp 7-10,
3. ^Programming Perl, 5th Edition, preface
4. ^'osh - manned.org'. manned.org. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
5. ^ ^abJohnson, Chris (2009).[1]Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the Linux Shell, Apress, Retrieved on September 27, 2019. ISBN9781430219989
6. ^'exec(3p) – POSIX Programmer's Manual'. Retrieved 2020-07-24.
7. ^Robbins, Arnold; Beebe, Nelson H. F. (May 16, 2005). Classic Shell Scripting: Hidden Commands that Unlock the Power of Unix. O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 10. ISBN9780596555269. Retrieved May 7, 2017. When the first two characters of a file are !#, the kernel scans the rest of the line for the full pathname of the interpreter to use to run the program.
8. ^Carling, M.; Degler, Stephen; Dennis, James (2000). Linux System Administration. Sams Publishing. p. 275. ISBN9781562059347. Retrieved May 7, 2017. When a typical shell script or function is finished, it may return an integer between 0 and 255 to let its parent know whether it was successful (or, in some case, what sort of action it performed).
9. ^Kumari, Sinny (November 23, 2015). Linux Shell Scripting Essentials. Packt Publishing Ltd. ISBN9781783552375. Retrieved May 7, 2017. Rather than using a file extension for shell scripts, it's preferred to keep a filename without extension and let an interpreter identify the type by looking into shebang(#!).
10. ^Taylor, Dave; Perry, Brandon (December 16, 2016). Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, 2nd Edition: 101 Scripts for Linux, OS X and UNIX Systems. No Starch Press. ISBN9781593276027. Retrieved May 7, 2017. Shell scripts don't need a special file extension, so leave the extension blank (or you can add the extension .sh if you prefer, but this isn't required.
11. ^Robbins, Arnold; Hannah, Elbert; Lamb, Linda (2008). Learning the vi and Vim Editors. p. 205. ISBN9781449313258.
12. ^Easttom, Chuck (2012). Essential Linux Administration:: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners. p. 228. ISBN978-1435459571.
13. ^'Csh Programming Considered Harmful'.
14. ^MSDN^{[not specific enough to verify]}
15. ^Windows NT 4 Workstation Resource Kit

External links[edit]

Shell Scripting Basics

• Beginners/BashScripting, Ubuntu Linux

Shell Script App For Mac