Bash Loops

As with any other language, loops are very useful. With bash you can use for loops, while loops and until loops.

For loops

Here is the structure of a for loop:

for var in ${list}
do
    your_commands
done

Example:

#!/bin/bash

users="devdojo, bobby, tony"

for user in ${users}
do
    echo "${user}"
done

You can also use for to process a series of numbers, for example here is one way to loop through from 1 to 10:

#!/bin/bash

for num in {1..10}
do
    echo ${num}
done

While loops

The structure of a while loop is quite similar to the for loop:

while [ your_condition ]
do
    your_conditions
done

Example:

#!/bin/bash

counter=1
while [[ $counter -le 10 ]]
do
    echo $counter
    ((counter++))
done

Let's create a script that asks the user for their name and not allow an empty input:

#!/bin/bash

read -p "What is your name? " name

while [[ -z ${name} ]]
do
    echo "Your name can not be blank, please enter a valid name!"
    read -p "Enter your name again? " name
done

echo "Hi there ${name}"

Now if you run the above and just press enter without providing input, the loop would run again and ask you for your name again and again until you actually provide an input.

Until Loops

The difference between until and while loops is that the until lool will run the commands within the loop until the condition becomes true.

Structure:

until [ your_condition ]
do
    your_commands
done

Example:

#!/bin/bash

count=1
until [ $count -gt 10 ]
do
    echo $count
    ((count++))
done

Continue and Break

As with other languages you can use continue and break with your bash scripts as well:

• continue tells your bash script to stop the current iteration of the loop and start the next iteration
• break tells your bash script to end the loop straight away