NAME

for, foreach, repeat − shell built-in functions to repeatedly execute action(s) for a selected number of times

SYNOPSIS

sh

for word [ in wordlist... ] ; do actions ; done

csh

foreach word (wordlist)
   ...
end

repeat count command

ksh

for word [ in wordlist ... ] ; do actions ; done

DESCRIPTION

sh

Each time a for command is executed, word is set to the next item taken from the in wordlist. If in wordlist ... is omitted, then the for command executes the do actions once for each positional parameter that is set. Execution ends when there are no more words in the list.

csh

The variable word is successively set to each member of wordlist. The sequence of commands between this command and the matching end is executed for each new value of word. Both foreach and end must appear alone on separate lines. 

repeat executes command repeatedly count times.  count must be a number.  command is restricted to a one-line statement. 

ksh

Each time a for command is executed, word is set to the next item taken from the in wordlist. If in wordlist ... is omitted, then the for command executes the do actions once for each positional parameter that is set.  Execution ends when there are no more words in the list. 

loop interrupts

The built-in command continue may be used to terminate the execution of the current iteration of a for or foreach loop, and the built-in command break may be used to terminate execution of a for or foreach command. 

EXAMPLES

In the examples using for/foreach, the code counts the number of lines for each file in the current directory whose name ends with a ".c" extension.  The repeat example prints "I will not chew gum in class" 500 times. 

sh

for file in ∗.c ; do wc -l $file ; done

csh

foreach file ( ∗.c )
wc -l $file
end

ksh

for file in ∗.c ; do wc -l $file ; done

csh

The repeat command re-executes the single subsequent command for count number of times. 

@ repetition = 500
repeat $repetition echo "I will not chew gum in class."

SEE ALSO

break(1), csh(1), ksh(1), sh(1)

NOTES

Both the Bourne shell, sh, and the Korn shell, ksh, can use the semicolon and the carriage return interchangeably in their syntax of the if, for, and while built-in commands. 

SunOS 5.5/SPARC  —  Last change: 15 Apr 1994