Shell Script to Check if the Current Year is Leap Year or Not

Ever wondered how to check if the current year is a leap year with a simple script? Well, wonder no more! In this post, we’ll write a Shell Script to Check if the Current Year is Leap Year or Not.

Leap Year Rules

A year is considered a leap year if it follows these rules:

• Divisible by 4: Every year that is evenly divisible by 4 is a leap year (except for the special cases below).
• Divisible by 100 (but not 400): Years divisible by 100 but not by 400 are not leap years.
• Divisible by 400: Years divisible by 400 are leap years (e.g., 1600, 2000).

Shell Script to Check if the Current Year is Leap Year or Not

Here’s a shell script that checks for leap years

#!/bin/bash

# Get the current year
current_year=$(date +"%Y")

# Check if divisible by 400 (most specific case)
if [[ $current_year % 400 -eq 0 ]]; then
  echo "$current_year is a leap year."
  exit 0
fi

# Check if divisible by 100 (but not 400)
if [[ $current_year % 100 -eq 0 ]]; then
  echo "$current_year is not a leap year."
  exit 0
fi

# Check if divisible by 4 (general case)
if [[ $current_year % 4 -eq 0 ]]; then
  echo "$current_year is a leap year."
  exit 0
fi

# If none of the above conditions are met, it's not a leap year
echo "$current_year is not a leap year."

Explanation

1. The script starts with #!/bin/bash, indicating the shell interpreter to use.
2. current_year=$(date +"%Y") captures the current year using the date command with the %Y format specifier.
3. The script then uses a series of if statements to check the leap year conditions:
   • The first if checks for divisibility by 400 (the most specific case, superseding the general divisibility by 4).
   • The second if checks for divisibility by 100 but not 400 (to exclude centuries not divisible by 400).
   • The third if checks for the general case of divisibility by 4.
4. Each if statement displays a message and exits the script (using exit 0) upon finding a match.
5. If none of the conditions are met, the final echo statement indicates the year is not a leap year.

Running the Script

1. Save the script as a file (e.g., leap_year.sh).
2. Make the script executable using chmod +x leap_year.sh.
3. Run the script with ./leap_year.sh.

The script will output a message indicating whether the current year is a leap year or not.