---
title: bash function and awk
date: 2018-05-31 00:00:48
tags:
---



I'll come across many hg branch-switching or log searching tasks during my work. Using bash functions and awk greatly reduce the time I spend on dealing with these tasks. So let's see what these functions can do to help me improve my productivity.



#### bash functions

Bash functions are scripts like `alias`, but can do much a lot than aliasThe first kind of usages of function is to run several scripts continuously, the same as `&&`  I guess:

```bash
function run {
    source ~/Develop/django/bin/activate
    ./manage.py runserver
}
```

I activate django virtural enviroment first and then run django serve.

Functions, like in any other languages, can take parameters and returns a result. So I can use this ability to do a liitle more complex work:

```bash
function ba { hgba | grep "$1" }
# hgba is an alias for hg branches
```

I can just type `ba release` then get current release branch info.

-----

Append:

I made some updates to the `ba` function and make it auto copying the branch result to my clipboard:

```bash

function ba { var="$(hgba | grep $1)" && echo $var | awk -F ':' END{print} | awk -F ':' '{print $NF}' | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy && echo $var }
```



#### awk

`awk` is a command I just know recently. I need to process a bunch of logs and analyze them. What I used to do is download the logs, grep things I want into a txt file and then process the txt file with python.