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I have a shell script name count.sh; inside this script I have multiple variables, like $INPUT_1, $INPUT_2, $OUTPUT_1, $OUTPUT_2; each variable represents a file. I want to count the lines of each file with wc -l , I tried wc -l $INPUT_1 and it worked, but what I want to do is to find a way to apply wc -l on every variable whose name contains the keyword INPUT or OUTPUT, similar principle with ls *keyword*. I am not sure if it is possible.

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  • ls is not a keyword at all -- it's an external command; if it didn't exist in /bin or /usr/bin it would just be a "command not found" error. Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 15:44
  • BTW, instead of INPUT_1 / INPUT_2 / etc, have you considered using an array? inputs=( [1]="something" [2]="something else" ), then it's just for input in "${inputs[@]}"; do ... Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 15:45
  • It's messy, but you can use set | sed -n '/^[_[:alpha:][[:alnum:]_]*=/s/=.*//p' to get a list of all variables, exported and not exported, and you can then filter that to select the names you want (grep -E -e 'INPUT|OUTPUT') and then you have variable names — and if you get varname=INPUT_1, you can use ${!varname} to get the value of $INPUT_1. It isn't a good way of doing things, though. Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 16:09
  • Actually the variable names are created by others, they may be $INPUT_AB, $OUTPUT_g, etc. The only certain thing is that the variables all contain keyword INPUT/OUTPUT. I want to write a shell script count.sh so when others execute count.sh in their scripts, all variables including the keyword INPUT or OUTPUT will selected and counted lines (each variable contain a specific file) Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 16:11
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