Question

I use seq a lot in my simulation shell scripts. The Git bash does not provide it, thus I am looking for an alternative.

Is there an alternative to seq that is part of the commands supported by the Git bash?

Current Solution: Based on Ignacio’s answer I wrote a little helper script that provides my legacy scripts with a simple seq function. I also noticed, when using echo {1..10} with variables, you need to use eval to get the sequence output instead of the unexpanded expression:

a=0; b=5
eval echo {$a..$b}  # outputs 0 1 2 4 5
echo {$a..$b}       # outputs {0..5}

Here is my new seq.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# check for the real seq and export a new seq if not found
# import this script via `source ./seq.sh`
#
hasSeq(){
  which seq >/devnull 2>&1
}

mySeq(){
    case $# in
        1) eval echo {1..$1};;
        2) eval echo {$1..$2};;
        3) echo "seq(3) not supported" 1>&2;;
    esac
}

if ! hasSeq; then
    seq(){
        mySeq $*
    }
fi

hasSeq || export -f seq

Answer 1

Assuming the version of bash is recent enough, you could use brace expansion.

$ echo {1..16}
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Or… you know…