Using Functions in a Library

Function Library
Another way of using functions is when you create more complicated scripts is to create functions that you place in a library so that you can source them from other scripts.    These library functions can be called from a script using “source” or the “dot” command.

Here is a simple example.  This is a script that is calling two different functions from library files.  The source command is used to access the library file and then it is called by the function name.

#!/bin/bash
source pwd.lib
pwda
echo
source ps.lib
psu

This is what the library files look like, simple with no introductory line to indicate it is for a bash shell as you want to call them from the same shell.

ps.lib
psu ()
{
command ps -Hcl -F S f -u ${1:-$USER}
}

pwd.lib
pwda ()
{
command pwd -LP "$@"
}

Tagged as: functions