I would like to know how to access the contents of a variety of txt files by passing arguments into shell scripts. I'll have different files and I'm expecting to execute with this command:
./script.sh FileA.txt
What should I put into my shell script so that I can access and manipulate the contents of the files?
I tried this but it outputs 0:
echo "$#"
I also tried these, but both output nothing:
for i in $1
do
echo "$i"
done
echo "$1"
To sum up the contents see this link to understand bash arguments more https://tecadmin.net/tutorial/bash-scripting/bash-command-arguments/ . Also as #Barmar said, to iterate through a list of arguments of unknown quantity use for i in "$#" .
edit
and as #Barmar said, $1 is simply the name of the argument. So echoing $1 will just echo the name.
I don't understand your question fully. Lets assume you have list of file names in a text file "FileA.txt".
And you wanted to run some commands for each file in the "FileA.txt" file.
Can you try below:
for i in `cat $1`
do
echo $i
done
Related
Below is a snapshot of a file called ".bashrc":
I'm beginner in bash and What i'm trying to do in bash is to check if the last two lines inside the file exist and correctly written like for example :
if [ export PATH=/opt/ads2/arm-linux64/bin:$PATH ]
then
echo "found system variable lines"
else
echo "systemvariables do not exists, please insert it in .bashrc"
fi
However, this doesn't seem to be trivial since the tow lines to be shared are not pure string lines.
Thanks in advance
Use grep to find stuff in file contents.
# if file .bashrc contains the line exactly export PATH=....
if grep -Fxq 'export PATH=/opt/ads2/arm-linux64/bin:$PATH' .bashrc ; then
echo "found system variable lines"
else
echo "systemvariables do not exists, please insert it in .bashrc"
fi
Read man grep and decide if you want or not the -F and -x options in grep. For sure research and learn regex - I recommend regex crosswords available on the net. Research also difference between single quoting and double quoting in shell. Remember to check scripts with http://shellcheck.net
Hi… Need a little help here…
I tried to emulate the DOS' dir command in Linux using bash script. Basically it's just a wrapped ls command with some parameters plus summary info. Here's the script:
#!/bin/bash
# default to current folder
if [ -z "$1" ]; then var=.;
else var="$1"; fi
# check file existence
if [ -a "$var" ]; then
# list contents with color, folder first
CMD="ls -lgG $var --color --group-directories-first"; $CMD;
# sum all files size
size=$(ls -lgGp "$var" | grep -v / | awk '{ sum += $3 }; END { print sum }')
if [ "$size" == "" ]; then size="0"; fi
# create summary
if [ -d "$var" ]; then
folder=$(find $var/* -maxdepth 0 -type d | wc -l)
file=$(find $var/* -maxdepth 0 -type f | wc -l)
echo "Found: $folder folders "
echo " $file files $size bytes"
fi
# error message
else
echo "dir: Error \"$var\": No such file or directory"
fi
The problem is when the argument contains an asterisk (*), the ls within the script acts differently compare to the direct ls command given at the prompt. Instead of return the whole files list, the script only returns the first file. See the video below to see the comparation in action. I don't know why it behaves like that.
Anyone knows how to fix it? Thank you.
Video: problem in action
UPDATE:
The problem has been solved. Thank you all for the answers. Now my script works as expected. See the video here: http://i.giphy.com/3o8dp1YLz4fIyCbOAU.gif
The asterisk * is expanded by the shell when it parses the command line. In other words, your script doesn't get a parameter containing an asterisk, it gets a list of files as arguments. Your script only works with $1, the first argument. It should work with "$#" instead.
This is because when you retrieve $1 you assume the shell does NOT expand *.
In fact, when * (or other glob) matches, it is expanded, and broken into segments by $IFS, and then passed as $1, $2, etc.
You're lucky if you simply retrieved the first file. When your first file's path contains spaces, you'll get an error because you only get the first segment before the space.
Seriously, read this and especially this. Really.
And please don't do things like
CMD=whatever you get from user input; $CMD;
You are begging for trouble. Don't execute arbitrary string from the user.
Both above answers already answered your question. So, i'm going a bit more verbose.
In your terminal is running the bash interpreter (probably). This is the program which parses your input line(s) and doing "things" based on your input.
When you enter some line the bash start doing the following workflow:
parsing and lexical analysis
expansion
brace expansion
tidle expansion
variable expansion
artithmetic and other substitutions
command substitution
word splitting
filename generation (globbing)
removing quotes
Only after all above the bash
will execute some external commands, like ls or dir.sh... etc.,
or will do so some "internal" actions for the known keywords and builtins like echo, for, if etc...
As you can see, the second last is the filename generation (globbing). So, in your case - if the test* matches some files, your bash expands the willcard characters (aka does the globbing).
So,
when you enter dir.sh test*,
and the test* matches some files
the bash does the expansion first
and after will execute the command dir.sh with already expanded filenames
e.g. the script get executed (in your case) as: dir.sh test.pas test.swift
BTW, it acts exactly with the same way for your ls example:
the bash expands the ls test* to ls test.pas test.swift
then executes the ls with the above two arguments
and the ls will print the result for the got two arguments.
with other words, the ls don't even see the test* argument - if it is possible - the bash expands the wilcard characters. (* and ?).
Now back to your script: add after the shebang the following line:
echo "the $0 got this arguments: $#"
and you will immediatelly see, the real argumemts how your script got executed.
also, in such cases is a good practice trying to execute the script in debug-mode, e.g.
bash -x dir.sh test*
and you will see, what the script does exactly.
Also, you can do the same for your current interpreter, e.g. just enter into the terminal
set -x
and try run the dir.sh test* = and you will see, how the bash will execute the dir.sh command. (to stop the debug mode, just enter set +x)
Everbody is giving you valuable advice which you should definitely should follow!
But here is the real answer to your question.
To pass unexpanded arguments to any executable you need to single quote them:
./your_script '*'
The best solution I have is to use the eval command, in this way:
#!/bin/bash
cmd="some command \"with_quetes_and_asterisk_in_it*\""
echo "$cmd"
eval $cmd
The eval command takes its arguments and evaluates them into the command as the shell does.
This solves my problem when I need to call a command with asterisk '*' in it from a script.
I am new to Ubuntu and learning bash script by googling around. I want to know how to load image files from a folder and save it in an array in bash script.
Probably am not doing a really smart search, but if anyone knows how to do it already, can you please help?
I am planning to get the path from the command line argument, so $1 will have the path, as far as I have read.
Thus, I have this code
#!/bin/bash
for f in "$1"
do
echo "$f"
done
But the output just prints 1 file instead of all 36 files. Can you please help me here?
Note : the input am giving is of this format
/path/*.png
That glob (/path/*.png) has already been expanded by the shell when your script is called.
You have all the filenames in $# (the array of all the positional parameters to the script/function).
Try
echo "$#"
to see them or
for file in "$#"; do
echo "$file"
done
The default list for in is $# so you can use for file; do in place of for file in "$#"; do if you want.
I run the following code for concatenating files in a directory given as the argument for the script file in bash
for i in $*
do
cat $* > /home/christy/Documents/filetest/catted.txt
done
This produce the error
cat: /home/christy/Documents/filetest/catted.txt: input file is output file
I think there are at least 4 things wrong with your script....
Firstly, your loop will set the value of i to the name of each file in succession, so you would want to actually use i inside your loop, like this:
for i in $*
cat "$i" ....somewhere
done
Secondly, if you use the > redirection, each file will land exactly on top of the previous one, so you should really use the >> redirection will append the current file to the end of the previous one like this
for i in $*
do
cat "$i" >> ...somewhere
done
Thirdly, I think you should use double-quoted "$#" to get all your command-line arguments, rather than plain $*
for i in "$#"
...
Fourthly, you can achieve the exact effect I think you want with this simpler command:
cat "$#" > /home/christy/Documents/filetest/catted.txt
You can't cat a file back onto itself. That's what "input file is output file" means. Because catted.txt shows up in your list of arguments to cat, it is going to try to cat to itself. So, move catted.txt to somewhere other than the source directory.
I'm having trouble getting a script to do what I want.
I have a script that will search a file for a pattern and print the line numbers and instances of that pattern.
I want to know how to make it print the file name first before it prints the lines found
I also want to know how to write a new script that will call this one and pass two arguments to it.
The first argument being the pattern for grep and the second the location.
If the location is a directory, it will loop and search the pattern on all files in the directory using the script.
#!/bin/bash
if [[ $# -ne 2 ]]
then
echo "error: must provide 2 arguments."
exit -1
fi
if [[ ! -e $2 ]];
then
echo "error: second argument must be a file."
exit -2
fi
echo "------ File =" $2 "------"
grep -ne "$1" "$2"
This is the script i'm using that I need the new one to call. I just got a lot of help from asking a similar question but i'm still kind of lost. I know that I can use the -d command to test for the directory and then use 'for' to loop the command, but exactly how isn't panning out for me.
I think you just want to add the -H option to grep:
-H, --with-filename
Print the file name for each match. This is the default when there is more than one file to search.
grep has an option -r which can help you avoid testing for second argument being a directory and using for loop to iterate all files of that directory.
From the man page:
-R, -r, --recursive
Recursively search subdirectories listed.
It will also print the filename.
Test:
On one file:
[JS웃:~/Temp]$ grep -r '5' t
t:5 10 15
t:10 15 20
On a directory:
[JS웃:~/Temp]$ grep -r '5' perl/
perl//hello.pl:my $age=65;
perl//practice.pl:use v5.10;
perl//practice.pl:#array = (1,2,3,4,5);
perl//temp/person5.pm:#person5.pm
perl//temp/person9.pm: my #date = (localtime)[3,4,5];
perl//text.file:This is line 5