How can I loop this command in a bash script until the repsonse contains the string "connection successful"

Question

I'm getting nowhere with this.

I simply want to make a bash script that loops 10 times and breaks if the output contains the string "connection successful".

I tried something like ret=$? and then if [$ret -ne 0] but I kept getting the else statement happen, even if ret is 1.

So now I'm trying to use grep to search for the words "connection successful", but I don't know how to use the syntax for that.

So I want something like:

for i in {1..10}
do
  ret=bluetoothctl connect 26:EE:F1:58:92:AF | grep "connection successful"

  if [$ret -ne ""]; then
    break
  fi
done

but obviously with the right syntax for $ret=bluetoothctl connect 26:EE:F1:58:92:AF | grep "connection successful"

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It is rarely necessary to store the output from grep when you just want to test whether some text matches a pattern. Instead, just invoke grep with its -q option and act on its exit status:

#!/bin/sh

tries=10

while [ "$tries" -gt 0 ]; do
    if bluetoothctl connect '26:EE:F1:58:92:AF' | grep -q 'connection successful'
    then
        break
    fi

    tries=$(( tries - 1 ))
done

if [ "$tries" -eq 0 ]; then
    echo 'failed to connect' >&2
    exit 1
fi

If bluetoothctl returns a sane exit status on failure and success, then you don't even need grep and can shorten the if-statement in the loop into the following:

if bluetoothctl connect '26:EE:F1:58:92:AF' >/dev/null
then
    break
fi

In fact, you might as well make bluetoothctl part of the loop condition (assuming you switch from a for loop to using a while loop like I'm showing here):

#!/bin/sh

tries=10

while [ "$tries" -gt 0 ] && ! bluetoothctl connect '26:EE:F1:58:92:AF'
do
    tries=$(( tries - 1 ))
done >/dev/null

if [ "$tries" -eq 0 ]; then
    echo 'failed to connect' >&2
    exit 1
fi

---

Consider using https://www.shellcheck.net to verify the syntax of your shell scripts. For the script in the question, it would point out that the test needs spaces within the [ ... ]:

  if [$ret -ne ""]; then
  ^-- SC1009 (info): The mentioned syntax error was in this if expression.
     ^-- SC1035 (error): You need a space after the [ and before the ].
     ^-- SC1073 (error): Couldn't parse this test expression. Fix to allow more checks.
                  ^-- SC1020 (error): You need a space before the ].
                  ^-- SC1072 (error): Missing space before ]. Fix any mentioned problems and try again.

Testing for a non-empty string is done with [ -n "$ret" ] or [ "$ret" != "" ]. Note that -ne is an arithmetic test.

You also do not assign the output of the pipeline correctly to ret. Unfortunately, the syntax is absolutely correct but does something completely different, so ShellCheck would not pick up on it. What you intended to use was

ret=$( bluetoothctl ... | grep ... )

Answer 2

Kusalananda gave tips on how to improve the code, but didn't exactly explain what you did wrong. Let's go over that:

I tried something like ret=$? and then if [$ret -ne 0] but I kept getting the else statement happen, even if ret is 1.

[ is a command, so you need to put a space between the command and its arguments, else the argument is going to be understood to be part of the command name. If ret is set to 1, bash should output the error [1: command not found, and if should see falsy because of the error. Similarly, [ requires the last argument to be ], and 0] isn't that. You also need a space there.

What you wanted was:

if [ "$ret" -ne 0 ]

Next part:

ret=bluetoothctl connect 26:EE:F1:58:92:AF | grep "connection successful"

What you're doing here is running the pipe connect 26:EE:F1:58:92:AF | grep "connection successful", while providing the connect command (which probably doesn't exist) the environment variable ret with value bluetoothctl.

In order to collect its output, you need to enclose the command in $():

  ret="$(bluetoothctl connect 26:EE:F1:58:92:AF | grep "connection successful")"

About this:

  if [$ret -ne ""]; then

You have the same issue of lacking spaces, but something further to understand is that basically most things are strings implicitly in bash, quotes are mostly just a way to be more explicit about it (besides also controlling some details on expansions). That means that [$ret -ne ""] evaluates pretty much exactly the same as the followings:

[$ret -ne ]
[$ret -ne ""''""'']
"["$ret "-ne" """]"
"["$ret"" "-ne""""" """]"""

which with $ret being empty, would equate to [ -ne ]. That evaluates to truthy because with just one argument (ignoring ]), [ checks whether it's a non-empty string, and -ne is.

Were $ret to be something else like foo bar baz, it'd be word-split because of the lack of quotes and you'd get the command [foo bar baz -ne ], which would have 4 arguments (including ]) and be falsy because bash wouldn't find the command [foo. Had you quoted $ret like ["$ret" -ne ""], then you'd get the equivalent of "[foo bar baz" -ne ], which would have 2 arguments (including ]) and also be falsy because bash wouldn't find the command [foo bar baz.

Another mistake you did here was using -ne, which is exclusively for numeric comparison. Even if you fixed the spacing and quoting issue, bash would give you the error integer expression expected. What you wanted was !=, which is for string comparison.

To sum it up and fix all that, what you wanted here was:

if [ "$ret" != "" ]; then

which can also be written as

if [ -n "$ret" ]; then

or

if [ "$ret" ]; then