Bourne Shell Script File Examples

Computer History Notes - Herong's Tutorial Notes

∟1977 - The Bourne Shell Developed by Stephen Bourne

∟Bourne Shell Script File Examples

This section provides some Bourne shell command line examples with explanations.

The Bourne shell supports executable script files, which are collections of Bourne command lines stored in text files. When a script file is executed, all command lines in the script file will be executed in the same order they appear in the file.

Here is a Bourne shell script file, f, which uses 3 command programs to print information about the specified file:

#!/bin/sh
# f name
echo
echo File list info:
ls -l $1 # list file info
echo
echo Numer of lines:
wc -1 $1 # count words in this file
echo
echo File type:
file $1

If the Bourne shell is defined as the starting shell after login, it will run the .profile script file in the home directory to initialize the environment. Here is a simple example of .profile script file:

# .profile

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:. # set command search path
MAIL=/usr/spool/mail/`logname` # mailbox location
export PATH MAIL
who  # see who is using the system