notes/IT/Scripting.md

## Marking a script as executable
Sometimes, you may need to mark a script as an executable to run it. On Linux, this can be accomplished by `chmod +x [FILE]`, where `[FILE]` is the file you want to mark as executable. To unmark a file as executable, use `chmod -x`

## The Shebang
There are various shells with their own language syntax (`sh`, `bash`, `fish`, etc). Therefore, more complicated scripts will indicate a particular shell by specifying the absolute path to the interpreter as the first line, prefixed by `#!` like this:
```sh
#!/bin/sh
echo "Hello, World!"
```
`#!/bin/sh` means that this script can be executed by the binary located at `/bin/sh`, and so the reader knows this is a `sh`(ell) script.

## Variables
In bash, variable assignment is done with the `=` operator. Variables are conventionally named with `SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE`, and can be accessed by prefixing the variable name with a dollar sign (`$`):
```bash
#!/bin/bash
# There may not be any spaces used during assignment, `A = B` means something different than `A=B`
# Assignment is done with the equal sign (=) operator:
MY_VARIABLE="Hi Mom!"
echo $MY_VARIABLE
```

## Quotes
In Bash, different styles of quotes mean different things:

| Quote             | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Single Quotes (') | Enclosing characters in single quotes (‘'’) preserves the literal value of each character within the quotes. A single quote may not occur between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash. Commands in single quotes will not be evaluated.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     |
| Double Quotes (") | Enclosing characters in double quotes (‘"’) preserves the literal value of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of ‘$’, ‘`’, ‘\’, and, when history expansion is enabled, ‘!’. When the shell is in POSIX mode (see [Bash POSIX Mode](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-POSIX-Mode.html)), the ‘!’ has no special meaning within double quotes, even when history expansion is enabled. The characters ‘$’ and ‘`’ retain their special meaning within double quotes (see [Shell Expansions](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Shell-Expansions.html)). The backslash retains its special meaning only when followed by one of the following characters: ‘$’, ‘`’, ‘"’, ‘\’, or `newline`. Within double quotes, backslashes that are followed by one of these characters are removed. Backslashes preceding characters without a special meaning are left unmodified. A double quote may be quoted within double quotes by preceding it with a backslash. If enabled, history expansion will be performed unless an ‘!’ appearing in double quotes is escaped using a backslash. The backslash preceding the ‘!’ is not removed. |
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## Commands
| Command       | Description                                                                                    |
| ------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `exit [CODE]` | Make the script process exit, where `[CODE]` is the exit code the process will terminate with. |
|               |                                                                                                |