Shell script "for" loop syntax

Brace expansion, {x..y} is performed before other expansions, so you cannot use that for variable length sequences.

Instead, use the seq 2 $max method as user mob stated.

So, for your example it would be:

max=10
for i in `seq 2 $max`
do
    echo "$i"
done

Try the arithmetic-expression version of for:

max=10
for (( i=2; i <= $max; ++i ))
do
    echo "$i"
done

This is available in most versions of bash, and should be Bourne shell (sh) compatible also.

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