Shell script "for" loop syntax

Solution 1:

Brace expansion, {x..y} is performed before other expansions, so you cannot use that for variable length sequences.

Instead, use the seq 2 $max method as user mob stated.

So, for your example it would be:

max=10
for i in `seq 2 $max`
do
    echo "$i"
done

Try the arithmetic-expression version of for:

max=10
for (( i=2; i <= $max; ++i ))
do
    echo "$i"
done

This is available in most versions of bash, and should be Bourne shell (sh) compatible also.

Step the loop manually:

i=0
max=10
while [ $i -lt $max ]
do
    echo "output: $i"
    true $(( i++ ))
done

If you don’t have to be totally POSIX, you can use the arithmetic for loop:

max=10
for (( i=0; i &lt max; i++ )); do echo "output: $i"; done

Or use jot(1) on BSD systems:

for i in $( jot 0 10 ); do echo "output: $i"; done