Korn Shell Programming by Example

case Conditionals

You might find yourself generating a series of if/elif/elif/elif/else syntax and wondering whether a better way of handling a multiway test exists. The case statement provides a succinct way to express multiway tests. This construct is similar to a switch statement in some programming languages and is vaguely similar to computed go tos. The syntax checks a certain value against several cases. Each case is terminated by ;;, and the value to be tested appears after the case syntax. The syntax is as follows (keywords are bold):

					case test_variable in
test_pattern1)         command(s)            ;;
test_pattern2)         command(s)            ;;
pattern3|or_pattern4) command(s)            ;;
*)    commands_to_execute_for_default_case     ;;
esac

The patterns can include file matching ...