Functions

Making Functions Return Values

The clue is to let the function run in its own sub process and let the value beecho-ed instead of return-ed as you'd do in most other programming languages.

functionget_number()
{
echo12;
}
echo"The number is"$(get_number)

Lambda functions in BASH

A great feature I love in Lisp, is lambda functions, a function which is applied to e.g. the values inside a loop. Doing this in BASH is so easy. I've created a simple (and yes, silly) example to illustrate this:

for el in black sabbath rocks; do
 double_length=$(
 # whatever is echo-ed here, is the return value of the lambda function.
 echo $(( $(echo $el | wc -c) * 2 ))
 )
 echo "The dobule length of $el is $double_length"
done