Bash Scripting Case Statement Examples. Syntax: The provision of default value in the case statement comes to the rescue here. Using these terminators, a case statement can be configured to test against all patterns, or to share code between blocks, for example. When a match is found, all the statements are executed until the ;;. Case Statements. They are used when you have multiple different choices or selections. Case statements are generally easier to read than multiple nested "if" statements. The basic syntax of the case command is as follows: Even with the simple example we used when looking at extending the IF statement previously can be better written as a CASE statement. Case statement doesn’t work too well with integers, but using it works superb when testing alphabetical ranges. The Bash Case Statement is the simple form of the if-then-else statement in bash scripts. Syntax of the bash case statement is given below: The Bash case statement takes a value once and tests that value multiple times. Case Statements. The Case Statement The case statement is used to execute statements based on specific values. Switch (Case) Statment in Bash. Even though we could do the same using many elif condition tests a case statement is easier to read and more efficient. When working with bash scripts, the Bash Case Statement will help to test simple values including integers and characters.. Instead of checking all if-else conditions, the case statement directly select the block to execute based on an input. The case statement is useful and processes faster than an else-if ladder. Often used in place of an if statement, if there are a large number of conditions. Case Statement Syntax. Bash Case Statement Example. The first two issues can be taken care of with the use of case statement in the select loop. A Better Case The if statement in BASH is adequate for testing a few conditions. it supports extended regular expressions, unlike POSIX case; the syntax is less clunky than case statements when there are few cases; One downside is that this is likely slower than case since it calls an external grep program, but I tend to consider performance last when using Bash. For now, we introduce a case statement in our select loop. The ;;& operator is like ;;, except the case statement doesn't terminate after executing the associated list - Bash just continues testing the next pattern as though the previous pattern didn't match. We will use a read statement to prompt for user input. Create the first program using the case statement in a shell script. This lesson looks at using BASH case statements. Here is an example of a Bash case statement used in a shell script. More Conditions using the BASH Case Statement. In this example we will create a case statement that will tell us which Star Trek series a character was in. The case statement will first expand the expression and then it will try to match it in turn with each specified case. Yes, we can create even more conditions when we make use of the BASH Case Statement in our scripts. Bash Shell scripting – The case statement March 21, 2017 admin Linux 0. Adding each conditional test becomes cumbersome, though, when it needs to test more. It will help you to match several values against one variable and It is very similar to the switch statement in C language and is more readable so anyone can understand it easily. case is POSIX 7 We will not cover the case statement here, please check our article on case statement in bash scripting for that. It stops searching for a pattern once it has found it and executed the statement linked with it, which is almost opposite in case of the C switch statement. 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