Editing Shell script (section)

===Batch jobs===
Shell scripts allow several commands that would be entered manually at a command-line interface to be executed automatically, and without having to wait for a user to trigger each stage of the sequence. For example, in a directory with three C source code files, rather than manually running the four commands required to build the final program from them, one could instead create a script for [[POSIX]]-compliant shells, here named <code>build</code> and kept in the directory with them, which would compile them automatically:

<syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
#!/bin/sh
printf 'compiling...\n'
cc -c foo.c
cc -c bar.c
cc -c qux.c
cc -o myprog foo.o bar.o qux.o
printf 'done.\n'
</syntaxhighlight>

The script would allow a user to save the file being edited, pause the editor, and then just run <code>./build</code> to create the updated program, test it, and then return to the editor. Since the 1980s or so, however, scripts of this type have been replaced with utilities like [[make (software)|make]] which are specialized for building programs.