Basic case statement

Instead of if/else statements, you can use case statements to evaluate a variable. Notice that esac is case backwards and is used to exit the case statement similar to fi for if statements.

Case statements follow this flow:

case $THING_I_AM_TO_EVALUATE in
  1) # Condition to evaluate is number 1 (could be "a" for a string too!)
    echo "THING_I_AM_TO_EVALUATE equals 1"
    ;; # Notice that this is used to close this evaluation
  *) # * Signified the catchall (when THING_I_AM_TO_EVALUATE does not equal values in the switch)
    echo "FALLTHOUGH or default condition"
esac # Close case statement

The following is a working example:

#!/bin/bash
VAR=10 # Edit to 1 or 2 and re-run, after running the script as is.
case $VAR in
  1)
    echo "1"
    ;;
  2)
    echo "2"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "What is this var?"
    exit 1
esac