Question

I have this piece of sh code which takes one argument at a time:

#!/bin/sh
    
clear
    
if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
    echo -n "There are no arguments. Please try again with arguments."
    echo
    exit
elif [ ! -f "$*" ]
    then
        echo -n "The image file '$*' doesn't exist!"
        echo
        exit
else
    display -size 40x50 $*
fi

How would I be able to make it print out up to 5 arguments therefore show 5 thumbnails at the same time?

Answer 1

After the else statement use a for loop to go over the input:

for i in $*; do
    if [ ! -f "$i" ]; then
        echo "invalid file $i"
    else
        display -size 40x50 $i &
    fi
done

The trick is to use & which makes the current task go to the background.