bash Quick Reference

Name

for

Synopsis

for x [in list]
do 
    commands 
done

For variable x (in optional list of values), do commands. If in list is omitted, "$@" (the positional parameters) is assumed.

Examples

Paginate files specified on the command line, and save each result:

for file; do
    pr $file > $file.tmp
done

Same, but put entire loop into the background:

for file; do
    pr $file > $file.tmp
done &

Search chapters for a list of words (like fgrep -f):

for item in `cat program_list`
do
    echo "Checking chapters for"
    echo "references to program $item…"
    grep -c "$item.[co]" chap*
done

Extract a one-word title from each file and use as new filename:

for file
do
    name=`sed -n ′s/NAME: //p′ $file`
    mv $file $name
done