bash for loop Explained with Examples

bash for loop is one of the most popular used function for the data processing . Learn more about bash for loop basic construction , how to process a range of data, define increments, using command outputs as inputs to for loop and more


bash , bourne again shell, provides shell scripting features in Linux and Unix /Unix like environments. bash off lots of functions and commands  and bash for loop is one of the most popular used function for the data processing . Learn more about bash for loop basic construction  , how to process a range of  data, define increments, using command outputs as inputs to for loop and more.

bash for loop construction

a bash for loop in its basic construction takes a input list of items, which can be numbers, letter or list derived from the output of a command.

Basic structure of a bash for loop is

for <variable name to hold the value > in < list of items to be processed >

do

<perform some action on variable name to holding the values >

done

The loop progresses by taking one item at a time from the list, perform some action and then pick up the next item, until all items in the list are processed.

List of items can be a static list or items   

list of numbers – 1 2 3 4  as in,

for i in 1 2 3 4 5

List of alphabetic characters  – a b  c d  as in,

 for i in a b  c d

Output of  a command

like  – ls *.log ,as in,

for i  in $(ls *.log)

Content of a file

like cat <filename> as in,

for i in $(cat /logs/ipaddress)

A variable name

like a=”abc def  ghi jkl mno ”  as in

for i in $a

bash for loop examples

To process the list of five numbers and print their values.

for  i  in 1 2 3 4 5
do
echo “Value is $i”
done

Value is 1
Value is 2
Value is 3
Value is 4
Value is 5

In this example:

i is used as variable name, a short name for index value, most commonly used in bash loops.
1 2 3 4 5 is the list of items
echo command prints the list item.

Same way for list of non numeric values.

for i in AA BB CC DD EE
do
echo “Value is $i”
done

Value is AA
Value is BB
Value is CC
Value is DD
Value is EE

bash for loop one liner

for loop can be written on a single line as by using ; as line breaks separating for and  do  lines.

for i in AA BB CC DD EE ; do echo “Value is $i” ; done

bash for loop – specify range

Specifying a range

Specify and range from  to 5 .

for i in ( 1..5 )
do
echo “Value is $i”
done

Value is 1
Value is 2
Value is 3
Value is 4
Value is 5

Specify range  start, end & incremental value

Specify start value as one , increment by one and final value as 5.

for i in ( c=1,c++,c=5 )
do
echo “Value is $i”
done

Value is 1
Value is 2
Value is 3
Value is 4
Value is 5

Using a command as input list

1. Use ls as input list of file, you can perform any  operation on these files based on name, size, permission etc. 

in the following example   the for loop just prints the file name.

for i in $(ls)
do
echo “Name is $i ”
done

2.  To find and kill all the httpd processes

for i in $(ps -ef | grep httpd |awk ‘{ print $2 }’
do
kill -9 $i
done

Processing for loop output at once

if you have a big file with number of ip addresses and you want to filter and count the select pattern;

for i in $(cat /tmp/ipaddresses )
do

 if [[ $i =~ 192 ]]
then 
echo $i 
fi

done  | sort  -u               ###  This  will print a  unique list of matching ips

and to get the count of matches 

for i in $(cat /tmp/ipaddresses )
do

 if [[ $i =~ 192 ]]
then 
echo $i 
fi

done  | sort  -u  | wc -l    ###  This  will print a total number of   unique matching ips

Break and continue,  for loop operation

For example if you want to scan a huge number of file and find the first empty file, you can use following bash for loop.

for i in $( ls /tmp/log*)
do
echo “Name is $i “

if [ -s $i ] ## file not empty
then
continue
else ## file is empty
echo “Empty file found $i”
break

done

Bash versions

Current GNU bash version is bash 5.0 , latest and older versions also can be downloaded from GNU ftp site http://gnu.mirrors.pair.com/bash/

$bash –version

tells the bash version installed, if you have older bash version it may not support newer  features or newer may not support deprecated functions.

More bash and related readings: 

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