BASH/C2/Command-Line-arguments-and-Quoting/English-timed
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Time | Narration |
00:01 | Welcome to the spoken tutorial on Command line arguments and Quoting in BASH. |
00:08 | In this tutorial, we will learn about: |
00:11 | * Command line Arguments and |
00:13 | * Quoting. |
00:15 | To follow this tutorial, you should be familiar with the Linux Operating System. |
00:20 | If not, for relevant tutorials please visit our website which is as shown. |
00:26 | For this tutorial, I am using: |
00:29 | * Ubuntu Linux 12.04 OS |
00:33 | * GNU Bash version 4.1.10 |
00:37 | GNU Bash version 4 or above is recommended for practice. |
00:43 | Shell script can accept arguments from the command line. |
00:46 | An argument is passed to a program being called. |
00:52 | Any number of arguments can be passed to a program. |
00:57 | Let us open the terminal by pressing Ctrl, Alt and T keys simultaneously on your keyboard. |
01:06 | I have already written the code in the file named arg.sh. |
01:12 | On the terminal, let me open this file by typing- |
01:16 | gedit space arg.sh space ampersand sign(&). |
01:23 | We use the ampersand to free up the prompt. |
01:27 | Now, press Enter. |
01:30 | The text editor is opened. |
01:33 | Let me explain the code now. |
01:36 | This is the shebang line. |
01:39 | This line will print the zeroth argument. |
01:43 | Here, $0 (Dollar zero) will print the name of the shell script. |
01:48 | This, in turn, means that the zeroth argument is the name of the program itself. |
01:55 | Let us execute the program and see. |
01:59 | Switch to the terminal. |
02:01 | First, make the file executable by typing: |
02:05 | chmod space plus x space arg.sh |
02:12 | Press Enter. |
02:14 | Now, type: dot slash arg.sh |
02:18 | Press Enter. |
02:19 | The output is displayed as: Zeroth argument is arg.sh. |
02:26 | Now, come back to our editor and type the three lines as shown here. |
02:33 | $1 (Dollar one) represents the first argument passed to the program from the command line. |
02:40 | $2 (Dollar two) represents the second argument passed to the program |
02:44 | and $3 (Dollar three) represents the third argument. |
02:48 | Now, click on Save. |
02:49 | Let us execute the program and see. |
02:52 | Press the up-arrow key, press Enter. |
02:57 | We see that the zeroth argument is printed |
03:00 | but the first, second and third arguments are blank. |
03:05 | This is because the command line arguments are given during execution. |
03:11 | Hence, press the up-arrow key and type: sunday monday and tuesday |
03:18 | Press Enter. |
03:21 | You can see that the first, second and third arguments are sunday monday and tuesday. |
03:28 | Now switch back to our editor. Press Enter. |
03:33 | Now, type the line as shown here. |
03:37 | $12 (Dollar twelve) represents the twelfth argument. |
03:41 | To write an argument greater than 9, we need to use curly brackets. |
03:46 | Else, bash will only take the argument of the integer in the ten's place |
03:53 | and you will not get expected output. |
03:57 | Now click on Save. |
03:59 | Let us execute the program. |
04:01 | Switch to the terminal. |
04:04 | Let me clear the prompt. |
04:07 | Now we need to give 12 or 13 arguments to the program. |
04:12 | Hence, type: dot slash arg.sh space 1 to 13. Now press Enter. |
04:23 | You can see that the 12th argument is 12. |
04:27 | Come back to our editor |
04:30 | and type the line as shown here. |
04:34 | $# (Dollar hash) gives the total number of arguments that have been passed to a program. |
04:40 | Now click on Save. |
04:43 | Let us execute. |
04:44 | Switch to the terminal. |
04:46 | Let us execute. Press the up-arrow key and press Enter. |
04:52 | We can see that the total arguments are 13. |
04:57 | Now switch to the editor. |
05:00 | Press Enter and type the lines as shown here. |
05:04 | $* (Dollar asterisk) will print all the arguments on a single line. |
05:10 | We will test this with the help of a simple for loop. |
05:14 | We will analyze this for loop at the time of execution. |
05:18 | Now, click on Save. Switch to the terminal. |
05:22 | Let me clear the prompt. |
05:26 | Now, let us type: dot slash arg.sh space sunday monday and tuesday. |
05:35 | Press Enter. |
05:38 | You can see that the total number of arguments are 3 as we have passed 3 arguments to our program. |
05:46 | As already said, $* will print all the arguments on a single line. |
05:54 | And this is the output for the for loop. |
05:57 | We see that all the arguments are printed on the single line. |
06:02 | Now, move back to our program and type the lines as shown here. |
06:09 | $@ (Dollar at) will also print all the arguments. |
06:13 | However, this time each argument will be printed on separate line. |
06:20 | This is another for loop which will print each argument in a separate line. |
06:26 | Let us see how. Click on Save. |
06:29 | Switch to the terminal. |
06:32 | Press the up-arrow key. |
06:34 | Press Enter. You can see the difference now. |
06:39 | These are the arguments printed by $@. |
06:43 | $@ prints each argument on separate line. |
06:47 | This is the output for the 2nd for loop. |
06:52 | Now let's move on to quoting in BASH. |
06:55 | Switch to the slides. |
06:57 | There are three types of quotes: |
06:59 | * Double quote |
07:00 | * Single quote |
07:02 | * Backslash. |
07:03 | Double quote substitutes the value of variables and commands. |
07:09 | Example echo “Username is $USER”. |
07:13 | It displays your username of the system. |
07:17 | Switch to the Terminal. |
07:20 | Let me clear the prompt. |
07:23 | Now, type: echo space within double quotes Username space is dollar USER in capitals. |
07:34 | Press Enter. |
07:35 | The username of the system is printed. |
07:39 | The output will vary according to your system. |
07:42 | Now move back to slides. |
07:46 | Single quotes preserves the literal meaning of each character of a given string. |
07:53 | It is used to turn off special meaning of all characters. |
07:58 | Switch to the Terminal. |
08:01 | Type: echo space within single quote Username is dollar USER in capital. |
08:10 | Press Enter. |
08:12 | The output is Username is $USER. |
08:16 | In this example, it prints all the characters which appear within the single quotes. |
08:23 | It does not substitute the value of variable $USER. |
08:28 | Switch back to our slides. |
08:31 | Backslash removes the special meaning from a single character. |
08:37 | It is used as an escape character in BASH. |
08:42 | Switch to the Terminal. |
08:44 | Now, type: echo space within double quote Username is backslash dollar USER (in capital). |
08:55 | Since we have given double quotes, we expect the echo command to display the username. |
09:02 | Let's try this command, so press Enter. |
09:06 | The output is Username is $USER. |
09:10 | In this example, the backslash removes the special meaning of (Dollar) '$' symbol. |
09:16 | $USER is just treated as a string without any special functionality. |
09:22 | This brings us to the end of this tutorial. |
09:25 | Switch back to our slides. |
09:27 | Let us summarize. |
09:28 | In this tutorial, we learnt: |
09:31 | * Command line arguments |
09:33 | * Functionality of double quote, single quote and backslash. |
09:39 | Watch the video available at the link shown below. |
09:42 | It summarizes the Spoken-Tutorial project. |
09:45 | If you do not have good bandwidth, you can download and watch it. |
09:51 | The Spoken Tutorial Project team: Conducts workshops using spoken tutorials. |
09:56 | Gives certificates to those who pass an online test. |
10:00 | For more details, please write to contact@spoken-tutorial.org |
10:07 | Spoken Tutorial Project is a part of the "Talk to a Teacher" project. |
10:10 | It is supported by the National Mission on Education through ICT, MHRD, Government of India.
More information on this mission is available at: http://spoken-tutorial.org/NMEICT-Intro |
10:24 | The script has been contributed by FOSSEE and spoken-tutorial team. |
10:30 | And this is Ashwini Patil from IIT Bombay, signing off. Thank you for joining. |