From owner-freebsd-questions  Tue Jul  9 10: 4:26 2002
Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C89CA37B400
	for <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>; Tue,  9 Jul 2002 10:04:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101])
	by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3C34A43E42
	for <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>; Tue,  9 Jul 2002 10:04:23 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com)
Received: (from dan@localhost)
	by dan.emsphone.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) id g69H4KwB006867;
	Tue, 9 Jul 2002 12:04:20 -0500 (CDT)
	(envelope-from dan)
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 12:04:20 -0500
From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To: David Smithson <david@customfilmeffects.com>
Cc: FreeBSD-Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: How do I repeat a command N times?
Message-ID: <20020709170420.GD20718@dan.emsphone.com>
References: <003101c22768$80ddb250$0801a8c0@customfilmeffects.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <003101c22768$80ddb250$0801a8c0@customfilmeffects.com>
X-OS: FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT
X-message-flag: Outlook Error
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.1i
Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
List-ID: <freebsd-questions.FreeBSD.ORG>
List-Archive: <http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/> (Web Archive)
List-Help: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=help> (List Instructions)
List-Subscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=subscribe%20freebsd-questions>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=unsubscribe%20freebsd-questions>
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

In the last episode (Jul 09), David Smithson said:
> Hello friends.  I want to repeat a command 607 times and stop.  How do I
> accomplish this besides writing a script that's 607 lines long?

Lots of ways.  

  for i in `jot 607` ; do
    mycommand
  done

This gets unwieldy if you want to loop, say a million times, since the
jot command creates a string made up of all the numbers separated by
spaces.  A bit more complicated, but scales better:

  i=1
  while [ $i -le 607 ] ; do 
    mycommand
    i=$((i+1))
  done

If you're using zsh, you can use

  repeat 607 ; do
    mycommand
  done

, but it's not portable to all shells like the while loop.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message