Fun with Bash Double Brackets, Regular Expressions, Case Matching, and Digits
My original inquiry was how do I form a double-bracketed if branch statement, using "=~" to check a variable against a regular expression for upper OR lower case of a specific search string in bash. After some working it out, I think I got it. See below.
For instance, in the example script below, the user is asked to answer yes or no, the value entered is then checked to "loosely" match a predefined value. In this case, yes/y (with any combination of case) will match the Regular Expression.
This example points out how to formulate your bracketed regular expression to match any variations in case (or even a single character answer, e.g., y OR n). There are differences with the bracketed use of regular expressions compared to how grep uses them, I'm finding.
Like, notice in the experimental script below, how single quotes are not used in the bracketed expression, and the "|" for the OR situation is not escaped with \. Also, with the example that checks for exactly 6 characters, no "\" are used to escape the curly braces.
#!/bin/bash
while [ 1 ]
do
echo "Are you ready to get started? Enter: Yes|No"
read result
#Test the result for yes/no (or variation)
if [[ "$result" =~ ^[Yy][Ee][Ss]$|^[Yy]$ ]]
then
echo "Good. Grab your stuff and let's roll!"
break
elif [[ "$result" =~ ^[Nn][Oo]$|^[Nn]$ ]]
then
echo "You answered No. Ok, we'll wait until later."
break
elif [[ "$result" =~ ^[Ee][Gg][Gg]$ ]]
then
echo "Congrats! You found the Easter Egg!"
while [ 1 ]
do
echo "Enter a 6 digit number:";
read theresult
if [[ "$theresult" =~ ^[0-9]{6}$ ]]
then
echo "Nice work! Bye!"
break
else
echo "Input not recognized, please enter 6 digits."
fi
done
break
else
echo "Input not recognized. Please enter Yes/No."
fi
done
exit 0
So there it is, just a quick example of how bracketed regular expressions can be used to test for specific values in bash. Hopefully this little example will help somebody save a bit of time having to research for this information.
Cheers!
Shannon VanWagner
07-17-2012
Hi, I was looking for something like this and got to your page from Google. I copied your code and ran it from my command line and it did not work. Neither Yes, Y, No or N worked for me.
ReplyDelete@Steve, rather than being run from the command line..this code is formatted to be put in a file, then the file should be set to be executable with chmod +x filename , then run with ./filename
ReplyDeleteslightly cleaned up version of yours. could cut the amount of code used but it is structured nicely
ReplyDelete#!/bin/bash
while true; do
clear
echo -n "Are you ready to get started? Enter: Yes|no: "
read result
#Test the result for yes/no (or variation)
if [[ "$result" =~ ^[Yy][Ee][Ss]$|^[Yy]$ ]]
then
echo "Good. Grab your stuff and let's roll!"
break
elif [[ "$result" =~ ^[Nn][Oo]$|^[Nn]$ ]]
then
echo "You answered No. Ok, we'll wait until later."
break
elif [[ "$result" =~ ^[Ee][Gg][Gg]$ ]]
then
echo "Congrats! You found the Easter Egg!"
while true; do
echo -n "Enter a 6 digit number: "
read theresult
if [[ "$theresult" =~ ^[0-9]{6}$ ]]
then
echo "Nice work! Bye!"
break
else
echo "Input not recognized, please enter 6 digits."
fi
done
break
else
echo "Input not recognized. Please enter Yes/no."
sleep 2s
fi
done
exit 0