Chapter 12. Programming

The "echo" command must be used with following cares since its implementation differs among shell builtin and external commands.

	Note
	Although "-n" option is not really POSIX syntax, it is generally accepted.

	Tip
	Use the "printf" command instead of the "echo" command if you need to embed escape sequences in the output string.

Special shell parameters are frequently used in the shell script.

Basic parameter expansions to remember are as follows.

Here, the colon ":" in all of these operators is actually optional.

Each command returns an exit status which can be used for conditional expressions.

	Note
	"0" in the shell conditional context means "True", while "0" in the C conditional context means "False".

	Note
	"[" is the equivalent of the test command, which evaluates its arguments up to "]" as a conditional expression.

Basic conditional idioms to remember are the following.

if [ conditional_expression ]; then
 if_success_run_this_command
else
 if_not_success_run_this_command
fi

Here trailing "|| true" was needed to ensure this shell script does not exit at this line accidentally when shell is invoked with "-e" flag.

Arithmetic integer comparison operators in the conditional expression are "-eq", "-ne", "-lt", "-le", "-gt", and "-ge".

There are several loop idioms to use in POSIX shell.

	Tip
	The C-language like numeric iteration can be realized by using seq(1) as the "foo1 foo2 …" generator.

	Tip
	See Section 9.4.9, “Repeating a command looping over files”.

Some popular environment variables for the normal shell command prompt may not be available under the execution environment of your script.

The shell processes a script roughly as the following sequence.

Single quotes within double quotes have no effect.

Executing "set -x" in the shell or invoking the shell with "-x" option make the shell to print all of commands executed. This is quite handy for debugging.

In order to make your shell program as portable as possible across Debian systems, it is a good idea to limit utility programs to ones provided by essential packages.

Most interpreters offer basic syntax check and code tracing functionalities.

The shell script can be improved to create an attractive GUI program. The trick is to use one of so-called dialog programs instead of dull interaction using echo and read commands.

Here is an example of GUI program to demonstrate how easy it is just with a shell script.

This script uses zenity to select a file (default /etc/motd) and display it.

GUI filer programs can be extended to perform some popular actions on selected files using additional extension packages. They can also made to perform very specific custom actions by adding your specific scripts.

In order to process data, sh needs to spawn sub-process running cut, grep, sed, etc., and is slow. On the other hand, perl has internal capabilities to process data, and is fast. So many system maintenance scripts on Debian use perl.

Let's think following one-liner AWK script snippet and its equivalents in Perl.

awk '($2=="1957") { print $3 }' |

This is equivalent to any one of the following lines.

perl -ne '@f=split; if ($f[1] eq "1957") { print "$f[2]\n"}' |

perl -ne 'if ((@f=split)[1] eq "1957") { print "$f[2]\n"}' |

perl -ne '@f=split; print $f[2] if ( $f[1]==1957 )' |

perl -lane 'print $F[2] if $F[1] eq "1957"' |

perl -lane 'print$F[2]if$F[1]eq+1957' |

The last one is a riddle. It took advantage of following Perl features.

This flexibility is the strength of Perl. At the same time, this allows us to create cryptic and tangled codes. So be careful.

A simple example "example.c" can compiled with a library "libm" into an executable "run_example" by the following.

$ cat > example.c << EOF
#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv, char **envp){
        double x;
        char y[11];
        x=sqrt(argc+7.5);
        strncpy(y, argv[0], 10); /* prevent buffer overflow */
        y[10] = '\0'; /* fill to make sure string ends with '\0' */
        printf("%5i, %5.3f, %10s, %10s\n", argc, x, y, argv[1]);
        return 0;
}
EOF
$ gcc -Wall -g -o run_example example.c -lm
$ ./run_example
        1, 2.915, ./run_exam,     (null)
$ ./run_example 1234567890qwerty
        2, 3.082, ./run_exam, 1234567890qwerty

Here, "-lm" is needed to link library "/usr/lib/libm.so" from the libc6 package for sqrt(3). The actual library is in "/lib/" with filename "libm.so.6", which is a symlink to "libm-2.7.so".

Look at the last parameter in the output text. There are more than 10 characters even though "%10s" is specified.

The use of pointer memory operation functions without boundary checks, such as sprintf(3) and strcpy(3), is deprecated to prevent buffer overflow exploits that leverage the above overrun effects. Instead, use snprintf(3) and strncpy(3).

Tutorial for bison(1) can be found in "info bison".

You need to provide your own "main()" and "yyerror()". "main()" calls "yyparse()" which calls "yylex()", usually created with Flex.

Here is an example to create a simple terminal calculator program.

Let's create example.y:

/* calculator source for bison */
%{
#include <stdio.h>
extern int yylex(void);
extern int yyerror(char *);
%}

/* declare tokens */
%token NUMBER
%token OP_ADD OP_SUB OP_MUL OP_RGT OP_LFT OP_EQU

%%
calc:
 | calc exp OP_EQU    { printf("Y: RESULT = %d\n", $2); }
 ;

exp: factor
 | exp OP_ADD factor  { $$ = $1 + $3; }
 | exp OP_SUB factor  { $$ = $1 - $3; }
 ;

factor: term
 | factor OP_MUL term { $$ = $1 * $3; }
 ;

term: NUMBER
 | OP_LFT exp OP_RGT  { $$ = $2; }
  ;
%%

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  yyparse();
}

int yyerror(char *s)
{
  fprintf(stderr, "error: '%s'\n", s);
}

Let's create, example.l:

/* calculator source for flex */
%{
#include "example.tab.h"
%}

%%
[0-9]+ { printf("L: NUMBER = %s\n", yytext); yylval = atoi(yytext); return NUMBER; }
"+"    { printf("L: OP_ADD\n"); return OP_ADD; }
"-"    { printf("L: OP_SUB\n"); return OP_SUB; }
"*"    { printf("L: OP_MUL\n"); return OP_MUL; }
"("    { printf("L: OP_LFT\n"); return OP_LFT; }
")"    { printf("L: OP_RGT\n"); return OP_RGT; }
"="    { printf("L: OP_EQU\n"); return OP_EQU; }
"exit" { printf("L: exit\n");   return YYEOF; } /* YYEOF = 0 */
.      { /* ignore all other */ }
%%

Then execute as follows from the shell prompt to try this:

$ bison -d example.y
$ flex example.l
$ gcc -lfl example.tab.c lex.yy.c -o example
$ ./example
1 + 2 * ( 3 + 1 ) =
L: NUMBER = 1
L: OP_ADD
L: NUMBER = 2
L: OP_MUL
L: OP_LFT
L: NUMBER = 3
L: OP_ADD
L: NUMBER = 1
L: OP_RGT
L: OP_EQU
Y: RESULT = 9

exit
L: exit

When you encounter program crash, reporting bug report with cut-and-pasted backtrace information is a good idea.

The backtrace can be obtained by gdb(1) using one of the following approaches:

Use ldd(1) to find out a program's dependency on libraries by the followings.

$ ldd /usr/bin/ls
        librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x4001e000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40030000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x40153000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

For ls(1) to work in a `chroot`ed environment, the above libraries must be available in your `chroot`ed environment.

If a GNOME program preview1 has received an X error, you should see a message as follows.

The program 'preview1' received an X Window System error.

If this is the case, you can try running the program with "--sync", and break on the "gdk_x_error" function in order to obtain a backtrace.

There are several memory leak detection tools available in Debian.

You can disassemble binary code with objdump(1) by the following.

$  objdump -m i386 -b binary -D /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-pc/stage1

	Note
	gdb(1) may be used to disassemble code interactively.

Run "make -p -f/dev/null" to see automatic internal rules.

The software build system has been evolving: