Switch case with fallthrough?

Question

I am looking for the correct syntax of the switch statement with fallthrough cases in Bash (ideally case-insensitive). In PHP I would program it like:

switch         


        

Answer 1

• Do not use () behind function names in bash unless you like to define them.
• use [23] in case to match 2 or 3
• static string cases should be enclosed by '' instead of ""

If enclosed in "", the interpreter (needlessly) tries to expand possible variables in the value before matching.

case "$C" in
'1')
    do_this
    ;;
[23])
    do_what_you_are_supposed_to_do
    ;;
*)
    do_nothing
    ;;
esac

For case insensitive matching, you can use character classes (like [23]):

case "$C" in

# will match C='Abra' and C='abra'
[Aa]'bra')
    do_mysterious_things
    ;;

# will match all letter cases at any char like `abra`, `ABRA` or `AbRa`
[Aa][Bb][Rr][Aa])
    do_wild_mysterious_things
    ;;

esac

But abra didn't hit anytime because it will be matched by the first case.

If needed, you can omit ;; in the first case to continue testing for matches in following cases too. (;; jumps to esac)