Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

How it works...

This script uses the ping command to find out the available machines on the network. It uses a for loop to iterate through a list of IP addresses generated by the expression 192.168.0.{1..255}. The {start..end} notation generates values between start and end. In this case, it creates IP addresses from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.255.

ping $ip -c 2 &> /dev/null runs a ping command to the corresponding IP address. The -c option causes ping to send only two packets. The &> /dev/null redirects both stderr and stdout to /dev/null, so nothing is printed on the terminal. The script uses $? to evaluate the exit status. If it is successful, the exit status is 0, and the IP address which replied to our ping is printed.

In this script, ...