Core Syntax

A simple-command is a sequence of non-blank words separated by blanks. The first word specifies the name of the command to be executed. Except as specified below, the remaining words are passed as arguments to the invoked command.
The command name is used to locate the command (builtin, nternal,external) .

A pipeline is a sequence of one or more commands separated by |. The standard output of each command but the last is connected by a Pipe to the standard input of the next command. Each command is run as a separate thread (if builtin or internal) or as a separate process (if external). The shell waits for the last command to terminate.
The exit status of a pipeline is the exit status of the last command in the pipeline.

A list is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by ;, &, &&, or

, and optionally terminated by ; or &. Of these four symbols, ; and & have equal precedence, which is lower than that of && and

. The symbols && and

also have equal precedence. A semicolon (;) causes sequential execution of the preceding pipeline, that is, the shell waits for the pipeline to finish before executing any commands following the semicolon. An ampersand (&) causes asynchronous execution of the preceding pipeline, that is, the shell does not wait for that pipeline to finish. The symbol && (

) causes the list following it to be executed only if the preceding pipeline returns a zero (non-zero) status. An arbitrary number of newlines may appear in a list, instead of semicolons, to delimit commands. A command is either a simple-command or one of the following. Unless otherwise stated, the value returned by a command is that of the last simple-command executed in the command. for name [ in word ... ] ; do list done Each time a for command is executed, name is set to the next word taken from the in word list. If word is an XML sequence then it is expanded as seperate words. If in word ... is omitted, then the for command executes the do list once for each positional parameter that is set (see Parameter Substitution section below). Execution ends when there are no more words in the list. case word in [ pattern [ | pattern ] ) list ;; ] ... esac A case command executes the list associated with the first pattern that matches word. The form of the patterns is the same as that used for file-name generation (see File Name Generation section), except that a slash, a leading dot, or a dot immediately following a slash need not be matched explicitly. if list ; then list ; [ elif list ; then list ; ] ... [ else list ; ] fi The list following if is executed and, if it returns a zero exit status, the list following the first then is executed. Otherwise, the list following elif is executed and, if its value is zero, the list following the next then is executed. Failing that, the else list is executed. If no else list or then list is executed, then the if command returns a zero exit status. while list ; do list ; done A while command repeatedly executes the while list and, if the exit status of the last command in the list is zero, executes the do list; otherwise the loop terminates. If no commands in the do list are executed, then the while command returns a zero exit status; until may be used in place of while to negate the loop termination test. eval arg [args ...] Converts each argument a string and joins them with a space. The resulting string is passed to the parser and re-evaluated and executed in the current context. (list) Execute list in a sub-shell. Hence changes to the environment made within this subshell do not affect the parent shell. { list;} list is executed in the current (that is, parent) shell. The { must be followed by a space. name () { list;} Define a function which is referenced by name. The body of the function is the list of commands between { and }. The { must be followed by a space. Execution of functions is described below (see Execution section). The { and } are unnecessary if the body of the function is a command as defined above, under Commands. break terminates a for ,while, or until loop The following words are only recognized as the first word of a command and when not quoted: if then else elif fi case esac for while until do eval done { } Comments Lines A word beginning with # causes that word and all the following characters up to a newline to be ignored. Variables Variables can be set using the assigment statement var=value Note that there is no space before or after the = (or this will be treated as executing a command with arg1 = "=") This initializes or overwrites a variable within the current shell environment. Variables can be either String or XML types. XML types can be atomic, node, or sequence values. ( any value which can be returned from an xquery expression). XML Variables are implicitly converted to strings when used in a string context. Variable Substitution Words are scanned for $ which indicates variable substition. $name or ${name} is substituted for the value of the variable named "name". $0 $2 ... $nnnnn is substituted for the positional paramter (note this differs from sh where n may be > 9) There are several builtin variables $? the exit code of the last command $@ All positional parameters as if they were quoted. equal to "$1" "$2" "$3" $$ The thread id of the current shell $! The thread id of the last background command executed with "cmd &" $* All positional parameters unquoted. equal to $1 $2 $3 ... $# The number of positional paramters $(cmd) cmd is executed and its output is is substituted with newlines turned into word seperators $<(cmd) cmd is executed and the output parsed as an XML document and the result is an XML expression Quoting Single and double quotes are implemented similar to sh/bash/ksh. Text in single quotes ('text') is treated literally with no expansion and treated as one word. Text in double quotes ( "text") is variable expanded then treated as one word. Within double quotes the escape character backslash (\) can be used to remove special meaning from $ or double quotes ("). <{{ }}> are block quotes. These are treated as single quotes but are useful to quote large text with unknown content. No expansion or interpretation of the contents, and the result is treated as one word with the <{{ and }}> removed. example: echo <{{ "this" is block 'quotes' and can contain anything including < and { and even {{, variable syntax like $variable is unexpanded. }}> produces "this" is block 'quotes' and can contain anything including < and { and even {{, variable syntax like $variable is unexpanded. XML Substition <[ xml ]> specifies explicit xml construction. The string between "<[" and "]>" is passed to xquery and the result is interprested as an XML sequence. All variables in the shell environment are made available to the xquery as declared external variables. Command Substitution The shell reads commands from the string between $( and ) and the standard output from these commands may be used as all or part of a word. Trailing newlines from the standard output are removed. No interpretation is done on the string before the string is read, except to remove backslashes (\) used to escape other characters. If the command is of the form $(<file) then the file is read, trailing newlines stripped and the result is a string containing the entire file. Variable expansion is done on "file" so that the following syntax works: a=foo.txt echo $(<$a)** XML Command Substitution Similar to Command Substitution, $<( command ) indicates a command which is executed and the output is parsed as an XML document. Command is executed identically to the $(command) syntax except that the result is then parsed as an XML document and the result is an XML expression. If the command is of the form $<(<file) then the file is read and parsed as an XML document. The resulting expression is of XML type. Variable expansion is done on "file" so that the following syntax works: a=foo.xml xecho -i $<(<$a) XML Namespaces Namespace support is manged with the declare namespaces command. Command execution Commands can be either builtin, internal, user defined or external commands. Builtin commands are "special" in that they interact with the shell environment. Internal commands implemented as a "convenience" in that they could be also implemented as user defined commands. User defined commands are supported by creation of a jar containing classes which implement the ICommand interface. External commands are any command (process) outside of xmlsh. External commands are executed as seperate processes, all other commands are executed with the JVM of xmlsh. See Also BasicSyntax