Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

for

Synopsis

                     for 
                     x [in 
                     list] 
  do 
                     commands 
                     done
                  

Assign each word in list to x in turn and execute commands. If list is omitted, $@ (positional parameters) is assumed.

Examples

Paginate all files in the current directory and save each result:

                     for file in *
                     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