3.3 Pattern Matching

Case Statements

Control flow is able to be managed effectively by if statements as discussed here. Though, sometimes there may be cases where you want a more flexible option for handling command execution. This is where case statements come into play; they offer a much more flexible workflow compared to your typical if statement.

To define a case statement, you can define your logic like so:

example="hello"

case $example in
	world!)
		echo "Branch A"
		;;
	hello)
		echo "Branch B"
		;;
	*)
		echo "Branch C"
		;;
esac

Case statements also support simple union declarations per-pattern:

example="hello"

case $example in
	hello | world!)
		echo "Branch A"
		;;
	*)
		echo "Branch B"
		;;
esac

If the need arises, it is also possible to perform expression matching when a simple pattern is defined as the statement:

example="hello"

case $example in
	h*)
		echo "World!"
		;;
	*)
		echo "This should not execute"
		;;
esac