Hi, I’m Erika Rowland (a.k.a. erikareads). Hi, I’m Erika. I’m an Ops-shaped Software Engineer, Toolmaker, and Resilience Engineering fan. I like Elixir and Gleam, Reading, and Design. She/Her. ← Constellation Webring → Published on Modified on

How to infinite loop in bash

while true
do
  <commands to run>
done

Or the less readable:

while :
do
  <commands to run>
done

Which uses the : built-in from bash:

$ help :
:: :
    Null command.

    No effect; the command does nothing.

    Exit Status:
    Always succeeds.

Embedded design version with functions:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

function infinitely_repeat {
  local command="$1"
  local delay="$2"
  while true
  do
    eval "$command"
    sleep "$delay"
  done
}

function timestamp {
  date
}

function file_count {
    number_of_files="$(find . | wc -l)"
    echo "file count: $number_of_files"
}

function byte_size {
    number_of_bytes="$(du -d 0 | awk '{print $1}')"
    echo "directory bytes: $number_of_bytes"
}

infinitely_repeat 'timestamp; file_count; byte_size' 5s

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