begin(1) - Linux man page
Name
begin - start a new block of code
Synopsis
- begin; [COMMANDS...;] end
Description
- The begin builtin is used to create a new block of code. The block is unconditionally executed. begin; ...; end is equivalent to if
true; ...; end. The begin command is used to group any number of commands into a block. The reason for doing so is usually either to introduce a new
variable scope, to redirect the input or output of a set of commands as a group, or to specify precedence when using the conditional commands like
and.
The begin command does not change the current exit status.
Example
- The following code sets a number of variables inside of a block scope. Since the variables are set inside the block and have local scope, they will be
automatically deleted when the block ends.
begin
- set -l PIRATE Yarrr
...
- end
# This will not output anything, since the PIRATE variable went out
# of scope at the end of the block
echo $PIRATEIn the following code, all output is redirected to the file out.html.
begin
- echo $xml_header
echo $html_header
if test -e $file
...
end
...
-
end > out.html
