I've recently written about using bash arrays and bash regular expressions, so here's a more useful example of using them to test IP addresses for validity.

To belabor the obvious: IP addresses are 32 bit values written as four numbers (the individual bytes of the IP address) separated by dots (periods). Each of the four numbers has a valid range of 0 to 255.

The following bash script contains a bash function which returns true if it is passed a valid IP address and false otherwise. In bash speak true means it exits with a zero status, anything else is false. The status of a command/function is stored in the bash variable "$?".

#!/bin/bash

# Test an IP address for validity:
# Usage:
#      valid_ip IP_ADDRESS
#      if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then echo good; else echo bad; fi
#   OR
#      if valid_ip IP_ADDRESS; then echo good; else echo bad; fi
#
function valid_ip()
{
    local  ip=$1
    local  stat=1

    if [[ $ip =~ ^[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}$ ]]; then
        OIFS=$IFS
        IFS='.'
        ip=($ip)
        IFS=$OIFS
        [[ ${ip[0]} -le 255 && ${ip[1]} -le 255 \
            && ${ip[2]} -le 255 && ${ip[3]} -le 255 ]]
        stat=$?
    fi
    return $stat
}

# If run directly, execute some tests.
if [[ "$(basename $0 .sh)" == 'valid_ip' ]]; then
    ips='
        4.2.2.2
        a.b.c.d
        192.168.1.1
        0.0.0.0
        255.255.255.255
        255.255.255.256
        192.168.0.1
        192.168.0
        1234.123.123.123
        '
    for ip in $ips
    do
        if valid_ip $ip; then stat='good'; else stat='bad'; fi
        printf "%-20s: %s\n" "$ip" "$stat"
    done
fi

If you save this script as "valid_ip.sh" and then run it directly it will run some tests and prints the results:

  # sh valid_ip.sh
  4.2.2.2             : good
  a.b.c.d             : bad
  192.168.1.1         : good
  0.0.0.0             : good
  255.255.255.255     : good
  255.255.255.256     : bad
  192.168.0.1         : good
  192.168.0           : bad
  1234.123.123.123    : bad

In the function valid_ip, the if statement uses a regular expression to make sure the subject IP address consists of four dot separated numbers:

  if [[ $ip =~ ^[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}$ ]]; then

  OIFS=$IFS
  IFS='.'
  ip=($ip)
  IFS=$OIFS

  [[ ${ip[0]} -le 255 && ${ip[1]} -le 255 \
          && ${ip[2]} -le 255 && ${ip[3]} -le 255 ]]
  stat=$?

Mitch Frazier is the System Administrator at Linux Journal.