begin(1) fish begin(1)
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
Version 1.23.1 8 Mar 2009 begin(1)
fish 1.23.1 - Generated Sun Mar 8 13:46:31 CDT 2009