Bash Scripting - 'until' Loop ~ Your Own Linux..!

Bash 'until' loop - We have been discussing loops in shell scripting and so far, we have covered two of its kinds - for loop and while loop, in two of our recent articles. In this article, we will be covering another type of a loop - until loop. If you have already read about while in bash scripting, you will find that until loop behaves exactly opposite to that of while loop. How, lets see it.

The 'until' Loop

In until loop, just the same as while loop, we have a condition, which is checked after every iteration. But the difference is here, which makes until loop's behavior exactly opposite to the while loop. In until loop,as long as the condition stays False, the block of code keeps executing, thus forming a loop. As soon as the condition becomes True, the loop is terminated.

Syntax:

until [ Condition ]
do

    -- Block of Commands --

done

Example:

#!/bin/bash

n=1

until [ $n -gt 5 ]
do
    echo "This is Iteration No. $n"
    n=$( expr $n + 1 )
done

In above code, we have n=1 before we enter the loop. When we enter the loop, the condition is checked whether n <= 5, which is False, and we enter the loop. Now, echo statement displays current value of n which is 1. Then, n is incremented by 1 (Please check our article on Arithmetic Operations for more details about expr). When the block ends, we have n=2 and the control goes back to until, where the condition is checked again. Condition follows, echo prints the value of n and increments its value by 1. So, after 5 iterations, we would have echo statement executed 5 times and with n incremented to value 6. At this point, control goes to until, condition is checked and evaluated to be True. Hence the loop exits here. In the end, we have below result in the output.

This is Iteration No. 1
This is Iteration No. 2
This is Iteration No. 3
This is Iteration No. 4
This is Iteration No. 5

An Infinite 'until' Loop

An infinite until loop is the one, which never ends. So, for this, you can mention an expression that evaluates to False. The condition always being False, the block of code will keep executing infinitely, without exiting.

Example:

#!/bin/bash

until [ 5 -ne 5 ]
do
   echo "You are in an Infinite Loop. Press CTRL + C to Exit.."
done

'break' Statement

The break statements are used in the loops to exit from the loop prematurely, based on certain condition (Please take look over our article on Bash Conditionals). If the condition follows, break statement is executed, which then prevents further iterations from happening and exits from loop.

Syntax:

until [ condition ]
do
    -- Some Commands --

    if [ condition ]
    then
        break
    fi

    -- More commands --

done

Example:

#!/bin/bash

until [ 5 -gt 5 ]
do
    echo "Enter a single-digit number :"
    read n

    if [ $n -gt 9 ]
    then
        echo "Wrong Entry! Program will terminate now.."
        break
    fi
    
    echo "Good!"
done

Output:

Enter a single-digit number :                                                                                                                                            
1                                                                                                                                                                        
Good!                                                                                                                                                                    
Enter a single-digit number :                                                                                                                                            
9                                                                                                                                                                        
Good!                                                                                                                                                                    
Enter a single-digit number :                                                                                                                                            
10                                                                                                                                                                       
Wrong Entry! Program will terminate now..

'continue' Statement

The continue statement in a loop, when certain condition becomes true, skips all the subsequent statements, coming after it, and continues with the next iteration of the loop. So, when a continue statement is reached, further portion of code is skipped from execution and next iteration is started.

Syntax:

until [ condition ]
do
    -- Some Commands --

    if [ condition ]
    then
        continue
    fi

    -- More commands --

done

Example:

We take an example of printing all even numbers less than 20. In this case, we check whether a number is perfectly divisible by 2, using mod operator. If it is not, its clearly an odd number, so we prefer not to print it and skip further processing. For this, we introduce a continue statement in this condition, to prevent odd numbers from printing.

#!/bin/bash

i=0
until [ $i -gt 20 ]
do
    i=$(expr $i + 1)
    j=$(expr $i % 2)

    if [ $j -ne 0 ]
    then
        continue
    fi

    echo "$i"
done

Output:

Exercise: Sum of squares of first 'N' natural numbers

#!/bin/bash

echo "Enter the Last Number"
read n

i=1
sum=0

until [ $i -gt $n ]
do
    j=$(expr $i \* $i)
    sum=$(expr $sum + $j)
    i=$(expr $i + 1)
done

echo "Sum of Squares of First $n Natural Numbers = $sum"

Result:

Enter the Last Number
6
Sum of Squares of First 6 Natural Numbers = 91

With this, we have come to an end of this discussion on bash until loops. In this article, we've learned how until are constructed and how the control flow works. We have also revised how break and continue statements work in until loops. Please share your views and feedback in the comments section below and stay tuned. Thank you.