Solaris™ 7 Reference

while — Shell Built-in Function to Execute Conditional Actions

Synopsis

sh, ksh

while [conditions]; do actions; done 

csh

while (conditions) 
... # do actions 
end 

Description

You can use loops to control the flow of execution in a script. A loop is an iterative mechanism that repeats a sequence of instructions until a predetermined condition is met. A while loop repeatedly executes a group of commands within the body of the loop until the test condition in the expression is no longer true. In other words, the while loop says, "While the expression is true, execute these commands."

sh, ksh

A while command repeatedly executes the while conditions and, if the exit status of the last command in the conditions list is 0, executes the do