Introduction to CSH shell programming

Note: I always look for documentations on the web when I start writing C shell script (csh). I grabbed this one from the Canisius College website, I don't know if they really wrote it or not but it's a very good one I want to be able to find here.

Overview: Shell programming is very similar in concept in many operating
systems. If you know how to write "batch" files in MS-DOS, then
you know the basic ideas behind shell programming in UNIX.
However, the syntax is altogether different. This tutorial focuses
solely on the Cshell, not the Bourne shell.

The need for shell programming


Do you ever find that you often do a number of UNIX commands together and
you would like to "bundle" them up into one name? You can do this, in effect,
creating a brand new command. Other operating systems permit this convenience,
most notably MS-DOS, which calls such files "BAT" or batch files. In UNIX,
such a file is called a shell script.

First, make sure you know about the various UNIX shells (Bourne and C-shell).
There is information in the glossary menu.

Both the Bourne shell and the C shell permit you to create and use shell
scripts, but because the syntax of the commands that these two shells use is
slightly different, your shell script must match the shell that is interpret-
ing it, or you will get errors.

A shell script is just a readable file that you create and into which you put
shell commands. The first line determines which shell program will interpret
or execute a shell script.

* If the first line begins with a C-shell comment (starting with # in
position 1) then this will be interpreted by the C-shell and must use
C-shell syntax.

* Otherwise, the file will be considered a Bourne shell script.

You can have comments in either type of shell script, although the syntax
differs. Bourne shell comments begin with a colon, whereas C-shell comments
commence with the pound sign (#).

For the rest of this tutorial, we will concentrate on the C-shell.

How to create simple scripts


Most shell scripts that you write will be very simple. They will consist of
a number of UNIX commands that you would have typed at the prompt, possibly
substituting a different file name. These substitutions are called positional

To create a shell script that has no parameters and does the same thing every
time it is called, just put the commands in a file. Change the permissions on
the file so that it is executable and then use it. The name of the file should
be something that you can easily remember and which makes sense given the
operation that you are performing.

Let's make one that clears the screen, prints out the date, time, hostname,
current working directory, current username, and how many people are logged on.
The name of the script will be "status". So edit a file called "status" and
put the following lines into it: (Don't type the "frame" of dashes and vertical
bars -- these are meant to show you what the file looks like.)

| #
| clear
| echo -n "It is currently: ";date
| echo -n "I am logged on as ";who am i
| echo -n "This computer is called ";hostname
| echo -n "I am currently in the directory ";pwd
| echo -n "The number of people currently logged on is:"
| who | wc -l

How to make a file executable and put it in your path


Make sure that you put the # in line 1. Now set the permissions:

% chmod 0700 status

This makes it executable and readable, both of which are necessary.
To use, just type

% status

If you see a cryptic command saying "command not found", it is probably
because your path does not include the current directory. To remedy this,
put the dot and a slash in front of the name:

% ./status

or you can modify your path:

% set path=($path .)

Note the space in front of the period.

Let's explain just a few things in the shell script above. Note that
echo -n is used a lot. The echo command just prints lines to the screen,
and normally it puts a newline after the thing it prints. -n inhibits
this, so that the output looks better.

You can string together more than one command on a line by using a semicolon.
Thus, clear;date;whoami;pwd could be put all on one line and all four of
the commands would be executed, one after the other. This is similar to the
vertical bar (the pipe), although it is simpler.



Now let's get more complicated by adding positional parameters. Parameters
are given after the name of the file when you start the shell script. Each
parameter has a position, first, second, etc. When the shell interpreter
reads and executes each line of the shell script file, it looks for symbols
like $1, $2, etc and it substitutes for these symbols the positional parameters.

Let's do a very simple example. Our shell script will attempt to find the
word "unix" (irrespective of case) in a file that we give as a positional

| #
| grep -i unix $1

The -i option says ignore case. Since we are always looking for the word
unix (or UNIX, or Unix, etc.), all we need to vary is the file name. Suppose
that we called this file "funix" for "find unix", and we made it executable
using chmod. Now to use it on a file, we would type

% funix myjunk

and it would search file "myjunk" for the word unix (or Unix, or UNIX, etc.),
printing out each line that it found.

You can have any number of parameters. The second is $2, the third is $3,

Another common variation is to refer to all the parameters at once by using
$*. Our little shell script only looks at one file at a time. If we typed

funix myjunk yourjunk theirjunk ourjunk

it would only search the first file "myjunk". To make it search all, we
could do

| #
| foreach i ($*)
| grep -i unix $i
| end

"foreach" is one of the many control structures of C-shell scripts. It takes
saying $i. All shell variables must have a $ in front when they are used.
The end keyword says that this is the end of the foreach construct, not the
end of the shell script.

In many situations, UNIX commands themselves are set up to accept multiple
filenames, and grep is one of these. So you could have done

| #
| grep -i unix $*

instead. But not all cases work this easily. You just have to know your
UNIX commands.

Let us review the syntax of parameters. Each parameter is identified by $1,
$2, $3 and so on. The name of the command is $0. A short hand for all the
parameters is $*. To find out how many parameters there are, $#argv is used.

Here's an example of the beginning of a shell script which checkes to see if
the user entered enough parameters, because some scripts require a certain
number. For example, grep needs at least one parameter, which is the string
to search for.

| #
| if ($#argv < 2) then
| echo "Sorry, but you entered too few parameters"
| echo "usage: slop file searchstring
| exit
| endif

This example gives you a flavor of the syntax of the if statement, use of the
echo command to act as output from a shell script, and the exit command which
terminates the shell script immediately.

The general syntax of if and if-then-else is:

if ( expression ) then if ( expression ) then
statements true statements
endif else
false statements

We will discuss what expressions can go inside the parentheses next.



The C shell language was meant to be reminiscent of the C language, and it is
to some extent. But there are differences. For example, in the above patterns
for if statements, the two keywords "then" and "endif" do not appear in C. The
curly braces of C are not used in the C shell for the same thing, but for some-
thing completely different, which may be quite confusing. So it is wrong to
imagine that knowledge of C confers on you the ability to write C shell scripts!

We start off with something that is used a lot in if statements, and is not in
C: file queries. These are expressions that are used to determine characterist-
ics of files so that appropriate action may be taken. For example, suppose
that you want to see if a certain file exists:

if (-e somefile) then
grep $1 somefile
echo "Grievous error! Database file does not exist".

The name of the file does not have to be "hard coded" into the if statement, but
may be a parameter:

if (-e $2) then

Here is a full list of the Cshell file queries.

-e file file merely exists (may be protected from user)
-r file file exists and is readable by user
-w file file is writable by user
-x file file is executable by user
-o file file is owned by user
-z file file has size 0
-f file file is an ordinary file
-d file file is a directory

All of queries except -e automatically test for file existence. That is, if
the file does not exist, then it cannot be writable. But -r will fail for one
of two reasons: 1.) the file exists but is not readable by the owner of the
process that is running this script, or 2.) the file does not exist at all.

There are several boolean operators that are applied to C shell expressions,
including the file queries above. They are:

! -- negate
&& -- logical and
|| -- logical or

For example the way to test to see if a file does not exist would be:

if (! -e somefile) then
# does not exist

Make sure to put spaces before and after the -e because failure to do os will
confuse the C shell. Here's a way to combine two queries:

if (-f somefile && -w somefile) then
# the file exists, is not a directory and I can write it

If there is a doubt as to precedence, use parentheses, but you may need to
use spaces before and after the parentheses. The C shell's parser is not as
robust as the C compiler's, so it can get confused easily when things are run
together without intervening spaces.



The C shell scripting language permits variables. The variables can have
long, mnemonic names and can be either character or numeric, although floating
point variables are not allowed. You can also create arrays, which will be
discussed in a later section.

When you refer to a variable's value in a C shell statement, you must prefix
the variable name with a dollar sign. The only time you don't use a dollar
sign is in the "set" statement which assigns a value to a variable, or changes
the value of an existing variable. The format of set is

set name = expression

C shell variables are dynamic. They are not declared but come into existence
when they are first set. Consequently, you delete them in a shell by using

unset name

There is a special value, called the NULL value, and it is assigned to a
variable by doing

set name =

with no expression. Notice that such a variable is still defined, i.e. it
still exists, even though it has this special NULL value. To actually get
rid of the variable, use unset.

To give a character value to a variable, you can use double quotes or you
can forego them. If the character string contains special characters, such as
a blank, then you must use double quotes. Here are some examples:

set name = Mark
echo $name
if ($name == Mark) then

set name = "Mark Meyer"
echo $name
set dirname = /usr/local/doc/HELP
ls $dirname

You can find out if a variable is defined or not by using the special form
$?var. This could be used in an if statement. For example:

if ($?dirname) then
ls $dirname

To change a variable's value, just use set again, but do not use $.

set dirname = /mnt1/dept/glorp

To add on to an existing character string variable, you can do something like
the following:

set sentence = "Hi"
set sentence = "$sentence there everybody"

Now $sentence, if echoed, would have "Hi there everybody" in it. The following
also works:

set sentence = Hi
set sentence = "$sentence there everybody"

There is a special variable called $ which has the process id number of the
process that is running this shell script. Many programmers use this to create
unique file names, often in the /tmp directory. Here's an example of copying
the first parameter (which is obviously a filename) into a temp file whose name
uses the pid number:

cp $1 /tmp/tempfile.$

This will create a file whose name is something like /tmp/tempfile.14506, if
the pid number is 14506.

Actually, the computer cycles through the pid numbers eventually, but usually
the same pid does not occur for several days, so there is seldom any need to

Use of variables in the shell


One of the nice features about Cshell programming is that there is no clear
line between what you can do in a shell script and what you can type in from
the prompt. Thus, you can set and unset variables, use for loops and do all
sorts of things at the command prompt. Some things will not work, like using
the parameters $1, $2, etc because there are none. But other features work,
and the use of setting variables is quite handy, especially when you want to
use a long, complex pathname repeatedly:

% set X = /usr/local/doc/HELP
% ls $X

You can even embed the shell variables inside other strings, as shown above in
$X/TUTORIALS. Obviously, you cannot follow the shell variable with a string
that begins with an alphabetic or numeric character because the C shell will
not know which variable you are talking about, such as $XHITHERE.

Arithmetic variables


Variables whose values are integer use a slightly different set command.
The commercial-at sign is used instead of "set" to indicate "assignment".
Otherwise, the Cshell would use a character string "123" instead of the
integer 123. Here are a couple of examples:

@ i = 2
@ k = ($x - 2) * 4
@ k = $k + 1

There is also a -- and a ++ operator to decrement and increment numeric
variables. Be careful not to omit the blank that follows the at-sign!

@ i--
@ i++

Expressions and true and false


The Cshell works very much like C in that it treats 0 as false and anything
else as true. Consequently, the expressions that are used in if and while
statements use the numeric values. Here's a counting loop that uses a numeric

@ n = 5
while ($n)
# do something
@ n--

There are also numeric constants, such as 0, 1, etc. An infinite loop is
often seen in Cshell scripts as

while (1)

To get out of such a loop, use break or exit. Of course, exit also causes the
entire shell script to end! In the following while statement, the user is
asked to type in something. If 0 is entered, then the while loop ends. Note
the use of lt; as the input device in the Cshell language, and an abbreviated
if statement that foregoes the use of then and endif:

while (1)
echo -n "Gimme something: "
set x = lt;
if (! $x) break

If a variable contains the NULL value, then its use in an expression will be
the same as if it were 0.

Boolean conditions


To wrap up the discussion of operators and conditions, here are the Boolean
comparison operators. Note that some of them are used only for strings while
some are used for only numbers. A string does not necessarily have to be
surrounded by double quotes (unless it contains special characters like spaces
or other things.)

Expressions and operators

== equal (either strings or numbers)
!= not equal (either strings or numbers)
=~ string match
!~ string mismatch
<= numerical less than or equal to
>= numerical greater than or equal to
> numerical greater than
< numerical less than

Here's a simple script to illustrate:

set x = mark
set y = lt;
echo $x, $y
if ($x == $y) then
echo "They are the same"

If you type in "mark" without the double quotes, it will say they are the
same. Strangely enough, if you omit the double quotes when you type in mark,
the Cshell no longer thinks the variables are equal! Apparently, the double
quotes are stored as part of the string when you enter the value by means of

Strings have to match exactly, and 0005 and 5 are two completely different
strings. However, they are the same numerical value. The following shell
script would say that 0005 and 5 are the same:

@ x = 5
@ y = lt;
echo $x, $y
if ($x == $y) then
echo "They are the same"

But if you were to replace the @'s with set's, they would no longer be the

Input and output


Output is fairly simple. You can use echo to show literals and variable values.
If you do not want to cause a newline to be printed, use -n. This is especial-
ly valuable in prompts, as in the while loop in the last section.

echo "Hi there world"
echo -n "Please type in your name: "
echo "The current directory is " $cwd

$cwd is the current working directory, and is a built-in variable (discussed

To get something from the user, use amp;lt. This causes the shell to pause until
the user types a carriage return. What the user typed before the RETURN is
the value that lt; returns. This can be used in many different settings: in
if conditions, while loops, or in set statements.

set x = lt;

Of course, if you expect to get something intelligent from the user, make sure
to prompt her for the type of information you are requesting!

Built-in variables


There are a few built-in variables, like $cwd and $HOME. $Cwd is the current
working directory, what you see when you use "pwd". $HOME is your home
directory. Here are others:

$user -- who am I?
$hostess -- name of the computer I am logged on to
$path -- my execution path (list of directories to be searched
for executables)
$term -- what kind of terminal I am using
$status -- a numeric variable, usually used to retun error codes
$prompt -- what I am currently using for a prompt
$shell -- which shell am I using (usu. either /bin/csh or /bin/sh)

These variables can be found by typing:

% set

from the prompt.

Array variables


Not all variables are single values. Some consist of a list of values, which
are variously dubbed "arrays", "multi-word" variables or "lists" (3 names for
the same thing). We will call them arrays herein, but they really are just
lists of values. The lists are dynamic in size, meaning that they can shrink
or grow.

To create an array out of a single value, use the parentheses. For example,
the following creates a list of four names:

set name = (mark sally kathy tony)

You can still retrieve the value of this variable by doing $name, but in doing
so you get the whole list.

A new syntax is used to find out how long an array is: $#name, such as:

echo $#name

which will print out 4. The value of $#name is always an integer, and can be
used in several settings.

To access elements in an array, square brackets surround a subscript expression
such as

echo $name[1]
echo $name[4]

If you give too high a subscript, Cshell prints "Subscript out of range".

There are many handy shortcuts that you can use in Cshell subscripts that are
not possible in C. For instance, you can specify a range of subscripts. The
range can even be one-ended so that you can specify, for example, all elements
from 5 to the end:

echo $name[2-3]
echo $name[2-] # all elements from 2 to the end
echo $name[1-3]

The subscript can itself be a variable, such as

echo $name[$i]

You can add to an array in several ways, all involving reassignment to the
variable using parentheses. For example to add something to the end, you
specify the current value of the variable followed by the new item, all sur-
rounded by parentheses:

set name = ($name doran)

Likewise you can add to the beginning:

set name = (doran $name)

The size of the array also changes, naturally. To add to the middle of the
array, you need to specify two ranges. For example, if your array is 5
elements long, say (mark kathy sally tony doran) and you wanted to add alfie
between kathy and sally, you could do

set name = ($name[1-2] alfie $name[3-])

Likewise, you could remove a middle element by specifying two ranges inside

@ k = 2
@ j = 4
set name = ($name[1-$k] $name[$j-])

Unfortunately, you cannot put arithmetic expressions inside the brackets, so
you must use extra variables.

The shift command gets rid of the first element of an array. For example, if
name contains (mark kathy sally), then

shift name

will get rid of the first element and move the remaining down by 1. If no
argument is given, then it shifts the built-in array variable argv.

shift names

In fact, shift is a holdover from Bourne shell programming which does not have
arrays. When a shell script examines its arguments, it often makes note of
what options were requested, and then moves on to the next option. Shift
makes this a whole lot easier.

Here's a typical example:

while ($#argv > 0)
grep $something $argv[1]

In conclusion, the arguments to a shell script are put into the array variable
argv, so that the first argument is $argv[1], the second is $argv[2], etc.
As another holdover from the Bourne shell, $1 is a shorthand for $argv[1],
$2 for $argv[2], and so forth. But the Bourne shell expression $* which stood
for all arguments will not work. You must use either $argv[*] or just $argv.

Switch statements


The switch statement provides a multi-way branch, much as in C. However,
several keywords differ from C. Here's the general format:

switch ( expression )
case a:
case b:

Notice that breaksw is used instead of just break, unlike C. Another major
difference is that the commands for a particular case MUST NOT be on the same
line. Thus, the following would be wrong:

case a: commands

The reason for this lies in the fact that the Cshell language is interpreted,
not compiled.

The values in the cases do not need to be integers or scalar values. They
can be "words" from an array. The following might be inside a while loop:

switch ($argv[$i])
case quit:
break # leave the switch statement
case list:
case delete:
case erase:
@ k = $i + 1
rm $argv[$k]

Here document


We know how > and < work in I/O redirection. There is a use for >>, namely to
append data to the end of an existing file. What about <<? Logically, this
should deal with some form of input, and it does. If you want to create a file
inside a shell script and get the data from the script itself, rather than from
another separate file or from the user, you create a HERE document.

Following << is a symbol, usually a word, often in capital letters. The cshell
takes the next line and all lines following until it finds the same word in
column 1 as the input to be sent into the command using the <&lt. Here's a simple
example of a shellscript that looks up your friends and family in a small data-

grep $i <&ltHERE
John Doe 101 Surrey Lane London, UK 5E7 J2K
Angela Langsbury 99 Knightsbridge, Apt. K4 Liverpool
John Major 10 Downing Street London

Here's an example of creating a temporary file:

cat > tempdata <&ltENDOFDATA
53.3 94.3 67.1
48.3 01.3 99.9
42.1 48.6 92.8

You can use any symbol to mark the end of the HERE document. The only require-
ment is that it must match << and be in column 1.

Be careful about symbols in your here document because alias, history, and
variable substitutions are performed on the lines of the here document. This
can actually be quite useful. Just put $variables into your here document if
you want to customize the here document.

Remember to clean up files that you might create inside a shell script. For
example the numerical data file above, tempdata, is still lingering in the
current directory, so you should probably delete it, unless you specifically
want it to remain. However, the database of names given to the grep command
above does not create an extra file, so it is preferred. But occasionally you
need the same file to be given to several commands, and it would be wasteful and
error-prone to duplicate it in the shellscript with several here documents.

Executing commands


Occasionally we need to execute a command inside another command in order to get
its output or its return code. To get the output, use the backquotes. For
example, the following could be put inside a shell script:

echo "Hello there `whoami`. How are you today?"
echo "You are currently using `hostname` and the time is `date`"
echo "Your directory is `pwd`"

Of course all of these commands have equivalents in Cshell variables except the
date command. Following is a better example:

echo "There are `wc -l $1` lines in file $1"

Another use of commands is to use their return codes inside conditional expres-
sions. For example, the -s option of the grep command stands for silent mode.
It causes grep to do its job without producing any output, but the return code
is then used. You cannot see the return code, but you can use it if you sur-
round the command in curly braces:

if ({grep -s junk $1}) then
echo "We found junk in file $1"

Notice that if (`grep junk $1`) would not work because this would cause
grep's output to be substituted into the expression, but in silent mode, there
is no output.

The return code of a shell script is set by the exit statement, which can take
an integer argument:

exit -1
exit 0
exit 12

Good script programmers follow the convention that 0 means "all ok" while a
non-zero value indicates some error code. If you use "exit" with no argument,
0 is assumed.

The return code of a C program is set by the exit() system call, which also
takes an integer argument. The same convention is followed that 0 is "all ok".

Now the odd thing is that 0 usually means "false" which would cause the if
statement to do the false statements. To get around this weird mismatch of
conventions, the curly braces invert the return code. That is, if grep finds
the string it normally returns 0. But the curly braces turn this into 1 so
that the if statement will trigger properly. You do not necessarily have to
be aware of this to program Cshell scripts properly. Just follow the conven-



Cshell scripts (and also Bourne shell scripts) can be recursive. This works
because each UNIX command is started in its own shell, with its own process and
its own process id. This is also the reason shell scripts run so much more
slowly, because starting processes is slow. So if the same shell script
filename appears inside itself, UNIX just blindly starts up another process and
runs the Cshell in it, interpreting the commands in the file.

Recursive shell scripts are very common when the script is naturally recursive
with regard to the tree structure. Many built-in UNIX commands allow the -R
option to specify that the command is done recursively to all components of
the directory:

% ls -RC /

As an example of a recursive shellscript, here's one that prints the head of
each file in the current directory and in every subdirectory. Let us suppose
that this shellscript is in a file called "headers":

foreach i (*)
if (-f $i) then
echo "============= $i ==================="
head $i
if (-d $i) then
(cd $i; headers)

Note the use of parentheses in (cd $i;headers). The parentheses here mean to
do the commands in a new shell, for the cd command normally changes the current
directory, which would be disastrous for later functioning of the script, which
would have no way to return to the previous directory when it finished. But
isolating the commands in their own shell makes this secure and modular.

To run headers, just do

% cd &ltwhatever dir you want>
% headers



There is not much support for debugging in Cshell scripts. You can always rely
on the good old standard way of debugging: peppering your code with output
statements, echo in this case, to see what is going on. To deactivate some of
them without getting rid of them, comment them out by putting a pound sign in
column 1.

About the only other support for debugging is using some options to the Cshell.
-v is verbose and -x echoes the commands after ALL substitutions are made. In
order to use these, however, you cannot run your shellscript by just typing in
the name followed by arguments. Rather, you must give the name of the file as
an argument itself to the csh command, followed by the arguments to your own

% csh -vx somescript args

Both options are needed because the Cshell does a lot of substitutions (history,
alias, and variable) after it reads each line. -vx causes both the original
line from the script file to be printed, as well as the revised form after the
substitutions are made.

Another handy option is -n, which parses the script commands without execution
in order to check for Cshell syntax errors.

% csh -n somescript

Performance considerations


Shell scripts are interpreted in UNIX. That is, there does not exist a
compiler to translate the code into machine language, such as the C or Ada
compiler does. As you might have heard, interpreted languages tend to be
very slow in execution speed, so do not write a numerical analysis program in
the C-shell script language! Most shell scripts run very slowly.

The interpreter of shell scripts is the /bin/csh program itself. The cshell
"knows" when it is executing commands from a file as opposed to reading them
from the user sitting at a terminal, but it is still the same interpreter

Whenever you run a command in a shell, a new copy of the shell is started up
(or "forked off", to use proper UNIX lingo). The new copy is actually another
process that is also running the csh interpreter. When it starts, it reads
the .cshrc file from your home directory in order to learn about any aliases
and paths that you may have customized. Thus, if your .cshrc file is long,
startup time for a command is long.

There is a way to avoid loading the .cshrc file for a shell script. On the
first line of the file containing the script put


The comment symbol (#) is actually a special UNIX symbol that means "the name
of the program to interpret this file follows me". Thus, /bin/csh appears be-
cause it is the interpreter for this file. The bang symbol (!) means not to
load the preamble file for this interpreter.

You can even put options to the interpreter on this line. For instance if
you wanted the shell script lines echoed for purposes of debugging, you could
use instead:

#!/bin/csh -vx

Generally shell scripts are either short or are used because it is too clumsy
to write a C program to make all the file decisions that need to be made.
Shell programming is a convenience, and it has a clearly defined niche, but
that niche is not general purpose problem solving such as you might use C or
Ada for.

Many programmers still use the Bourne shell for shell programming, partly be-
cause it is faster and partly because there are more books and examples out
there. Since the Bourne shell is simpler and has fewer features, it is a
smaller interpreter so starting it up takes less time.

Learning more about shell programming


We have only just skimmed the surface! Cshell programming is about as deep and
as complex as any other kind of programming. Indeed you could write all sorts
of programs in Cshell, but they would be terribly slow compared to their C or
Pascal counterparts.

Many important topics have been omitted from this tutorial, such as the role
of environment variables and how variables' values are either inherited or
lost. But with this tutorial almost 920 lines long, some cuts had to be made!

Whole books have been written about shell programming, although most of them
focus on the Bourne shell, which is still widely used. The best book that
teaches about Cshell programming is

"An Introduction to Berkeley UNIX" by Paul Wang.
Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1988, 512 pages, paperback.

Bouwhuis CALL NUMBER: QA76.76.063 W36 1988

He also shows several complete non-trivial scripts, and their Bourne shell

One of the best ways to learn about any programming language is just to read
other people's programs and try to discover how the elements of the language
are being used. If you stumble across an unfamiliar item, look it up in a
reference book or the man page. (Most of the Csh man page is devoted to the
minutiae of Cshell programming.) You can look at some of the scripts in
the public directory /usr/local/bin, for starters.

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