I have an assignment due for class and can find nothing about 'awe'?

The assignment says to create a script with a function called 'awe' that echo's the words "Because Linux is Awesome!" after 3 questions.

I'm very new to all this and would really like the help. I tried awk but from what I have seen in the videos I watched about this that this is not what he wants. Thanks.

Answer using the Bash shell:

The assignment says to create a script with a function called 'awe' that echo's the words "Because Linux is Awesome!" after 3 questions.

The assignment says to create a function, so let's see what the Bash manual tells us about functions:

Shell functions are a way to group commands for later execution using a single name for the group. They are executed just like a "regular" command. When the name of a shell function is used as a simple command name, the list of commands associated with that function name is executed. Shell functions are executed in the current shell context; no new process is created to interpret them.

Functions are declared using this syntax:

name () compound-command [ redirections ]

or

function name [()] compound-command [ redirections ]

This defines a shell function named name. The reserved word function is optional. If the function reserved word is supplied, the parentheses are optional. The body of the function is the compound command compound-command (see Compound Commands). That command is usually a list enclosed between and , but may be any compound command listed above, with one exception: If the function reserved word is used, but the parentheses are not supplied, the braces are required. compound-command is executed whenever name is specified as the name of a command.

In short, a function is a set of commands bundled under a given name you supply, which is the name of the function.

The assignment tells you how the function shall be named (awe), as well as what this function shall do (output "Because Linux is Awesome!"). To output that message, you can use echo. The echo command, which Bash provides as a shell built-in, is used to output to stdout (console). Given this information you can write your function:

awe()
 echo "Because Linux is Awesome!"

Next in the assignment is to make it execute after having asked three questions. For this you can use the read command, which can accept several option flags. Let's see what the bash manual tells us about read:

read [-ers] [-a aname] [-d delim] [-i text] [-n nchars]
 [-N nchars] [-p prompt] [-t timeout] [-u fd] [name …]

One line is read from the standard input, or from the file descriptor fd
supplied as an argument to the -u option, split into words as described above in Word Splitting, and the first word is assigned to the first name, the second word to the second name, and so on. If there are more words than names, the remaining words and their intervening delimiters are assigned to the last name. If there are fewer words read from the input stream than names, the remaining names are assigned empty values. The characters in the value of the IFS variable are used to split the line into words using the same rules the shell uses for expansion (described above in Word Splitting). The backslash character ‘’ may be used to remove any special meaning for the next character read and for line continuation. If no names are supplied, the line read is assigned to the variable REPLY.

read accepts several options. In this case, two are most relevant, since you want to ask the user a question and get input for them. Those options are:

• 
  -r → If this option is given, backslash does not act as an escape character. The backslash is considered to be part of the line. In particular, a backslash-newline pair may not be used as a line continuation.


• 
  -p prompt → Display prompt, without a trailing newline, before attempting to read any input. The prompt is displayed only if input is coming from a terminal.

While this is not the worst situation to forget -r, you almost always want to include it to prevent from acting as an escape character. -p shows the user a prompt. You can put both options after a single -, so you might write something like this:

read -rp "Question? " variable

The user's input has been stored in variable. No we want to use that input, by including it in a sentence that we output back to the user. To expand variable into the value it holds, you put a $ in front of it. This works even within double quotes.

echo "This is a reply to the user and it contains $variable!"

Normally this is all you need to solve this assignment. In my example script I added a little twist, to use a if condition to act upon whether "yes" or "no" was answered for the last question. So again lets see what the manual tells us about if conditions:

The syntax of the if command is:

if test-commands; then
 consequent-commands;
[elif more-test-commands; then
 more-consequents;]
[else alternate-consequents;]
fi

The test-commands list is executed, and if its return status is zero, the consequent-commands list is executed. If test-commands returns a non-zero status, each elif list is executed in turn, and if its exit status is zero, the corresponding more-consequents is executed and the command completes. If ‘else alternate-consequents’ is present, and the final command in the final if or elif clause has a non-zero exit status, then alternate-consequents is executed. The return status is the exit status of the last command executed, or zero if no condition tested true.

The test-command I have used in my example below is [, which is a shell built-in which tests for conditional true or false. When you use [, you must pass a final argument ]. = tests variables for equality as strings.

So, here is the example script:

#!/bin/bash

# function 'awe' to output "Because Linux is Awesome!"
awe()
 echo "Because Linux is Awesome!"


# asking three questions
read -rp "Enter your name!: " name
echo "Well, hello then $name!"
read -rp "How old are you?: " age
echo "Being $age makes you nearly as old as I am"
read -rp "Do you like Linux?: " likes_linux

# acting on if the last input is yes or something else in which case we assume no
if [ "$likes_linux" = "yes" ];then
 awe
else
 echo "Why don't you like Linux?"
fi