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Looping Constructs

Bash supports the following looping constructs.

Note that wherever you see a `;' in the description of a command's syntax, it may be replaced with one or more newlines.

until
The syntax of the until command is:
until test-commands; do consequent-commands; done
Execute consequent-commands as long as test-commands has an exit status which is not zero. The return status is the exit status of the last command executed in consequent-commands, or zero if none was executed.
while
The syntax of the while command is:
while test-commands; do consequent-commands; done
Execute consequent-commands as long as test-commands has an exit status of zero. The return status is the exit status of the last command executed in consequent-commands, or zero if none was executed.
for
The syntax of the for command is:
for name [in words ...]; do commands; done
Expand words, and execute commands once for each member in the resultant list, with name bound to the current member. If `in words' is not present, `in "$@"' is assumed. The return status is the exit status of the last command that executes. If there are no items in the expansion of words, no commands are executed, and the return status is zero.

The break and continue builtins (see section Bourne Shell Builtins) may be used to control loop execution.


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