NAME
begin - start a new block of code
Synopsis
begin; [COMMANDS...;] end
Description
The begin builtin is used to create a new block
of code. The block is unconditionally executed. begin; ...; end is
equivalent to if true; ...; end. The begin command is used to group
any number of commands into a block. The reason for doing so is
usually either to introduce a new variable scope, to redirect the
input or output of a set of commands as a group, or to specify
precedence when using the conditional commands like and.
The begin command does not change the current exit status.
Example
The following code sets a number of variables
inside of a block scope. Since the variables are set inside the
block and have local scope, they will be automatically deleted when
the block ends.
begin
set -l PIRATE Yarrr
...
end
# This will not output anything, since the PIRATE variable went out
# of scope at the end of the block
echo $PIRATE
In the following code, all output is redirected to the file
out.html.
begin
echo $xml_header
echo $html_header
if test -e $file
...
end
...
end > out.html