The case statement

This lesson covers the case statement, which branches on several possible values.

Writing case $var in pattern1) ... ;; pattern2) ... ;; *) ... ;; esac branches according to the pattern of a value. It corresponds to the switch statement of other languages.

The sample code prints a different message depending on the value of env, a variable holding an environment name. *) is the default pattern meaning "everything else".

A common early stumble is forgetting the ;; at the end of each branch. Leave it out and the branch does not finish as expected, and you get an error.

In professional work, case statements are often used in deployment scripts that switch settings by environment name (development, staging, production).

📖 Reference code

#!/bin/bash
env="production"
case $env in
    development)
        echo "This is the development environment"
        ;;
    production)
        echo "This is the production environment"
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Unknown environment"
        ;;
esac

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