begin - start a new block of code¶
Synopsis¶
begin; [COMMANDS ...]; end
Description¶
begin
is used to create a new block of code.
A block allows the introduction of a new variable scope, redirection of the input or output of a set of commands as a group, or to specify precedence when using the conditional commands like and
.
The block is unconditionally executed. begin; ...; end
is equivalent to if true; ...; end
.
begin
does not change the current exit status itself. After the block has completed, $status
will be set to the status returned by the most recent command.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example¶
The following code sets a number of variables inside of a block scope. Since the variables are set inside the block and have local scope, they will be automatically deleted when the block ends.
begin
set -l PIRATE Yarrr
...
end
echo $PIRATE
# This will not output anything, since the PIRATE variable
# went out of scope at the end of the block
In the following code, all output is redirected to the file out.html.
begin
echo $xml_header
echo $html_header
if test -e $file
...
end
...
end > out.html