Korn Shell Programming by Example

while

Official Description

Executes the while list repeatedly, and if the exit status of the last command in the list is 0 (zero), it executes the do list.

Syntax

while list ;do list ;done

Options

None

Oddities

The while loop is the same as the until loop except that the test is checking for a true value. If it finds one, it repeats the loop. The until loop checks for a false value and repeats the loop until the test evaluates to true.

Example

$ a=5
$
$ while (( $a>0 ))           # Repeat the loop as long as a>0
> do
> print $a
> (( a=a-1 ))
> done
5
4
3
2
1
$