Concepts:
Command line arguments in bash.

Text:
Implement a bash shell script that prints the result of the sum of a set of numbers passed to the script as a command line argument.

A number of equivalent solutions have been proposed. The differences between them consists on the way used to iterate between program arguments.

Example:
Running the script as follow:

$ ./bash_ex3.sh 2 3 4 5 6

the provided output is:

1) Arguments: 2 3 4 5 6  Sum: 20
2) Arguments: 2 3 4 5 6  Sum: 20
3) Arguments: 2 3 4 5 6  Sum: 20

Solution:

bash_ex3.sh

# Implement a bash shell script that prints the result of the sum of a set
# of numbers passed to the script as a command line argument.
# A number of equivalent solutions have been proposed. The differences between
# them consists on the way used to iterate between program arguments.
#    Example:
# $ ./bash_ex3.sh 2 3 4 5 6
# 1) Arguments: 2 3 4 5 6  Sum: 20
# 2) Arguments: 2 3 4 5 6  Sum: 20
# 3) Arguments: 2 3 4 5 6  Sum: 20
 
 
#!/bin/bash
 
 
# First solution
final_sum=0
 
echo -n "1) Arguments: "
# The variable $* contains all the program arguments with the exclusion of 
# the program name
for a in $*
do
   echo -n "$a "
   final_sum=$[$final_sum+$a]      
done  
echo " Sum: $final_sum"
 
 
# Second solution
final_sum=0
 
echo -n "2) Arguments: "
# echo writes content of the variable $* to the screen
# The symbols ` ` represents the output of the command
for a in `echo $*`
do
   echo -n "$a "
   final_sum=$[$final_sum+$a]      
done  
echo " Sum: $final_sum"
 
 
# Third solution
final_sum=0
 
echo -n "3) Arguments: "
# The code $(command) corresponds to `command`
for a in $(echo $*)   
do
   echo -n "$a "
   final_sum=$[$final_sum+$a]      
done  
echo " Sum: $final_sum"