9.9.2 Conditional switch and case

9.9.2.1 Sh

pattern1[|pattern1a]) command list1;;

pattern2) command list2

command list2a;;

pattern3) command list3;;

*) ;;

esac

You can use any valid filename meta-characters within the patterns to be matched. The ;; ends each choice and can be on the same line, or following a <newline>, as the last command for the choice. Additional alternative patterns to be selected for a particular case are separated by the vertical bar, |, as in the first pattern line in the example above. The wildcard symbols,: ? to indicate any one character and * to match any number of characters, can be used either alone or adjacent to fixed strings.

This simple example illustrates how to use the conditional case statement.

#!/bin/sh

case $1 in

aa|ab) echo A

;;

b?) echo "B \c"

echo $1;;

c*) echo C;;

*) echo D;;

esac

So when running the script with the arguments on the left, it will respond as on the right:

aa A

ab A

ac D

bb B bb

bbb D

c C

cc C

fff D