Is there a better way to run a command N times in bash?

Question

I occasionally run a bash command line like this:

n=0; while [[ $n -lt 10 ]]; do some_command; n=$((n+1)); done

To run some_command

Answer 1

If you are OK doing it periodically, you could run the following command to run it every 1 sec indefinitely. You can put other custom checks in place to run it n number of times.

watch -n 1 some_command

If you wish to have visual confirmation of changes, append --differences prior to the ls command.

According to the OSX man page, there's also

The --cumulative option makes highlighting "sticky", presenting a running display of all positions that have ever changed. The -t or --no-title option turns off the header showing the interval, command, and current time at the top of the display, as well as the following blank line.

Linux/Unix man page can be found here