Check if a variable exists in a list in Bash

Question

I am trying to write a script in bash that check the validity of a user input.
I want to match the input (say variable x) to a list of valid values.

<

Answer 1

Assuming TARGET variable can be only 'binomial' or 'regression', then following would do:

# Check for modeling types known to this script
if [ $( echo "${TARGET}" | egrep -c "^(binomial|regression)$" ) -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "This scoring program can only handle 'binomial' and 'regression' methods now." >&2
    usage
fi

You could add more strings into the list by separating them with a | (pipe) character.

Advantage of using egrep, is that you could easily add case insensitivity (-i), or check more complex scenarios with a regular expression.

Answer 2

This is almost your original proposal but almost a 1-liner. Not that complicated as other valid answers, and not so depending on bash versions (can work with old bashes).

OK=0 ; MP_FLAVOURS="vanilla lemon hazelnut straciatella"
for FLAV in $MP_FLAVOURS ; do [ $FLAV == $FLAVOR ] && { OK=1 ; break; } ; done
[ $OK -eq 0 ] && { echo "$FLAVOR not a valid value ($MP_FLAVOURS)" ; exit 1 ; }

I guess my proposal can still be improved, both in length and style.

Answer 3

how about

echo $list | grep -w -q $x

you could either check the output or $? of above line to make the decision.

grep -w checks on whole word patterns. Adding -q prevents echoing the list.

Answer 4

Matvey is right, but you should quote $x and consider any kind of "spaces" (e.g. new line) with

[[ $list =~ (^|[[:space:]])"$x"($|[[:space:]]) ]] && echo 'yes' || echo 'no' 

so, i.e.

# list_include_item "10 11 12" "2"
function list_include_item {
  local list="$1"
  local item="$2"
  if [[ $list =~ (^|[[:space:]])"$item"($|[[:space:]]) ]] ; then
    # yes, list include item
    result=0
  else
    result=1
  fi
  return $result
}

end then

`list_include_item "10 11 12" "12"`  && echo "yes" || echo "no"

or

if `list_include_item "10 11 12" "1"` ; then
  echo "yes"
else 
  echo "no"
fi

Note that you must use "" in case of variables:

`list_include_item "$my_list" "$my_item"`  && echo "yes" || echo "no"

Answer 5

The shell built-in compgen can help here. It can take a list with the -W flag and return any of the potential matches it finds.

# My list can contain spaces so I want to set the internal
# file separator to newline to preserve the original strings.
IFS=$'\n'

# Create a list of acceptable strings.
accept=( 'foo' 'bar' 'foo bar' )

# The string we will check
word='foo'

# compgen will return a list of possible matches of the 
# variable 'word' with the best match being first.
compgen -W "${accept[*]}" "$word"

# Returns:
# foo
# foo bar

We can write a function to test if a string equals the best match of acceptable strings. This allows you to return a 0 or 1 for a pass or fail respectively.

function validate {
  local IFS=$'\n'
  local accept=( 'foo' 'bar' 'foo bar' )
  if [ "$1" == "$(compgen -W "${accept[*]}" "$1" | head -1)" ] ; then
    return 0
  else
    return 1
  fi
}

Now you can write very clean tests to validate if a string is acceptable.

validate "blah" || echo unacceptable

if validate "foo" ; then
  echo acceptable
else 
  echo unacceptable
fi

Answer 6

You can use (* wildcards) outside a case statement, too, if you use double brackets:

string='My string';

if [[ $string == *My* ]]
then
echo "It's there!";
fi