BEGIN(1)

NAME
begin - start a new block of code

SYNOPSIS
begin; [COMMANDS ...]; end
{ [COMMANDS ...] }

DESCRIPTION

begin is used to create a new block of code.

A block allows the introduction of a new variable scope <#variables-scope>, redirection of the input or output of a set of commands as a group, or to specify precedence when using the conditional commands like and.

The block is unconditionally executed. begin; ...; end is equivalent to if true; ...; end.

begin does not change the current exit status itself. After the block has completed, $status will be set to the status returned by the most recent command.

Some other shells only support the { [COMMANDS ...] ; } notation.

The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.

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
    echo $PIRATE
    # This will not output anything, since the PIRATE variable
    # went out of scope at the end of the block

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

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fish-shell developers