The case construct in bash shell allows us to test strings against patterns that can contain wild card characters. Bash case statement is the simplest form of the bash if-then-else statement.
Syntax of bash case statement.
case expression in
pattern1 )
statements ;;
pattern2 )
statements ;;
...
esac
Following are the key points of bash case statements:
- Case statement first expands the expression and tries to match it against each pattern.
- When a match is found all of the associated statements until the double semicolon (;;) are executed.
- After the first match, case terminates with the exit status of the last command that was executed. So All wildcards MUST go towards the end of the Case statement
- If there is no match, exit status of case is zero.