Loops are programming constructs that some particular statement needs to be executed repetitively for a finite number of time with respect to the given condition.

Loops that are available in Bourne Shell are

• For
• While
• until

For Loop

For loop iterates over the set of values for example array until all values are consumed

Syntax:

for name [ [in [words …] ] ; ] do commands; done

Exmaple

for i in seq 10 
do 
   echo "Looping: $i" 
done 

Another Example

for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 
do 
   echo "Looping $i"
done 

While Loop

While loop operate on condition where it repeats until condition is false

Syntax:

while test-commands; do consequent-commands; done

Example:

INPUT_STR=Bash
while [ "$INPUT_STR" != "q" ] 
do 
  echo "$INPUT_STR is fun" 
  read INPUT_STR
  echo "You: $INPUT_STR" 
done 

Infinite While Loop

INPUT_STR=Bash
while :
do 
  echo "$INPUT_STR is fun" 
  read INPUT_STR
  echo "You: $INPUT_STR" 
done

Where, while : is always evaluated as true.

Until Loop

Iterates until given condition is evaluated as false which is quite opposite to how while loop works

Syntax:

until test-commands; do consequent-commands; done

Example:

INPUT_STR="Bash"
until [ "$INPUT_STR" == "q" ] 
do 
  echo "$INPUT_STR is fun" 
  read INPUT_STR
  echo "You: $INPUT_STR" 
done 

Loop Control Statements

Loop control flow statements can be used to alter the flow of loops which are also referred as jump statements

• Break
• Continue

If you use break command, it will break or exit the loop unconditionally where as continue will force the loop to go to the next iteration

Following example illustrates the use of continue statement to print only even numbers while iterating sequence from 1 to 10

for i in seq 10
do
   if [ $(($i%2)) -ne 0 ]; then continue; fi
   echo $i
done

Following example illustrates the use of break command to exit the loop abruptly with example

for i in seq 10
do
   if [ $i -eq 5 ]
   then
       break;
   fi
   echo $i
done
echo "Loop is done. Thank you" 

Above example prints numbers from 1 to 4 only since we are breaking the loop at number 5.