The shift Statement

You use the shift statement to process the positional parameters, one at a time, from left to right. Recall that the positional parameters are identified as $1, $2, $3, and so on. The effect of the shift command is that each positional parameter is moved one position to the left and the current $1 parameter is lost.

The shift statement is useful when you are writing shell programs in which a user can pass various options. Depending on the specified option, the parameters that follow can mean different things or might not be there at all.

The format of the shift command is as follows:

shift  number

The parameter number is the number of places to be shifted and is optional. If not specified, the default is 1; that is, the parameters ...

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