CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxmacosbash
Wesley Bland
Wesley Bland

Reputation: 9062

Difference between ;& and ;; in a bash script

I'm copying a bash script from a Linux box to my Mac laptop and in the process, the script has started complaining about the usage of ;&.

With the error:

./build.sh: line 122: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
./build.sh: line 122: ` ;&'

There's a few uses in the script, but a short one is:

case ${OPTION} in
    xxx)
        export DEVICES=xxx
         ;;
    yyy)
        export DEVICES=yyy
         ;;
    *)
        echo "${OPTION}: Unknown device type:  use xxx|yyy"
        exit 1
        ;&
    esac
;;

I've replaced all usages of ;& with ;; and I think that everything is ok, but I'm still curious what I've done. What's the difference between semicolon-ampersand and double semicolon in case statements?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 2724

Answers (1)

John1024
John1024

Reputation: 113864

From man bash:

Using ;& in place of ;; causes execution to continue with the list associated with the next set of patterns.

Since ;& occurs on the last pattern in the case statement, it should make no difference in that script.

Upvotes: 8

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