how to make switch execute 2 cases

Question

how to make switch execute 2 cases?

I tried with the following code, but it execute only the first case

#!/bin/sh
action="titi"

case "$action" in
    toto|titi)
    echo "1_$action"
    ;;
    tata|titi)
    echo "2_$action"
    ;;
esac

What you want is called "fall through". Please have a look at : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12010686/case-statement-fallthrough — SylvainD, Jul 17 '13 at 13:24
What is the expected result and what you got? Do you expect `1_titi` and `2_titi` together ? — VoidPointer, Jul 17 '13 at 13:29
@VoidPointer exactelly I expected 1_titi and 2_titi together — MOHAMED, Jul 17 '13 at 13:43
@josay thank you for the link. I will put the new code as an answer. — MOHAMED, Jul 17 '13 at 13:44

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 17 '13 at 13:53

The case statement in bash executes the commands in the COMMAND-LIST for the first match only.

However, In bash version 4 or later introduced the ;& terminator. The ;;& operator is like ;;, except the case statement doesn't terminate after executing the associated list - Bash just continues testing the next pattern as though the previous pattern didn't match. Using these terminators, a case statement can be configured to test against all patterns, or to share code between blocks, for example.

Reference: Excerpt taken from http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/ccmd/case

So if you have bash v 4 or later this would give your desired result:

#!/bin/sh
action="titi"

case "$action" in
    toto|titi)
    echo "1_$action"
    ;;&
    tata|titi)
    echo "2_$action"
    ;;
esac

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 17 '13 at 13:22

1

Maybe consider titi a default value to execute if no pattern is matched

#!/bin/sh
action="titi"

case "$action" in
    toto)
    echo "1_$action"
    ;;
    tata)
    echo "2_$action"
    ;;
    *)
    echo "1_$action"
    echo "2_$action"
esac

answered Jul 17 '13 at 13:22

mirkobrankovic

2,389
1
21
24

It works for me but I had to add some `"` around `toto` and `tata` – Sébastien Temprado Jun 11 '20 at 10:08

MOHAMED · Answer 3 · 2013-07-17T13:56:39.153

1

based on @josay comment, this is called "fall through" and could be done with bash script by using ;;& instead of ;; in the first case. But the "fall through" works only if the bash version is 4.0 or later

Following, Source code updated with the "fall through"

#!/bin/sh
action="$1"

case "$action" in
    toto|titi)
    echo "1_$action"
    ;;&
    tata|titi)
    echo "2_$action"
    ;;
esac

edited Jul 17 '13 at 13:56

answered Jul 17 '13 at 13:50

MOHAMED

41,599
58
163
268

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 17 '13 at 13:18

0

Use if twice and it matches twice.

if [ "$action" = 'toto' -o "$action" = 'titi' ]; then
    echo "1_$action"
fi
if [ "$action" = 'tata' -o "$action" = 'titi' ]; then
    echo "2_$action"
fi

If you need to use case, how about using function

function f1
{
    echo "1_$action"
}

function f2
{
    echo "2_$action"
}

case "$action" in
    titi)
    f1
    f2
    ;;
    toto)
    f1
    ;;
    tata)
    f2
    ;;
esac

answered Jul 17 '13 at 13:18

kamae

1,825
1
16
21

I want to use switch statement and not if – MOHAMED Jul 17 '13 at 13:19

how to make switch execute 2 cases

4 Answers4