Using grep in an if statement - linux

Question

My goal is to write a shell script take the users that I have already filtered out of a file and check whether those users have a certain string, and if they do, label them as major, if not, nonmajor. My trouble is coming from my first if statement, and I'm not sure if grep is the right way to go in an if statement. Here is what I have:
(
while read i
do
username=`echo $i | grep -v 'CMPSC 1513' | grep -P -v '(?!.*CPSMA 2923)CPSMA' | cut -d'|' -f2`
fullname=`echo $i | grep -v 'CMPSC 1513' | grep -P -v '(?!.*CPSMA 2923)CPSMA' | cut -d'|' -f3`
id=`echo $i | grep -v 'CMPSC 1513' | grep -P -v '(?!.*CPSMA 2923)CPSMA' | cut -d'|' -f4`
if [ $username ]
then
if grep -q "|0510"
then
echo $username":(password):(UID):(GID):"$fullname"+"$id":/home/STUDENTS/majors:/bin/bash"
else
echo $username":(password):(UID):(GID):"$fullname"+"$id":/home/STUDENTS/nonmajors:/bin/bash"
fi
fi
done
)<./cs_roster.txt
Just some info, this is contained in a while loop. In the while loop, i determine whether the person listed should even be major or nonmajor, and my if [ $username ] has been tested and does return all the correct users. At this point the while loop is only running once and then stopping.

Answer 1

Just remove the square brackets and pass $i to grep:
if echo $i | grep -q "|0510"
In your code sample, grep does not have anything to work on.

Answer 2

The "binary operator expected" occurs because you are invoking the command [ with the arguments "grep" and "-q" (you are not invoking grep at all), and [ expects a binary operator where you have specified -q. [ is a command, treated no differently that grep or ls or cat. It is better (IMO) to spell it test, and when invoked by the name test it does not require that its last argument be ]. If you want to use grep in an if statement, just do something like:
if echo "$username" | grep -q "|0510"; then ...
(Although I suspect, depending on the context, there are better ways to accomplish your goal.)
The basic syntax of an if statement is if pipeline; then.... In the common case, the pipeline is the simple command test, and at some point in pre-history, the decision was made to provide the name [ for the test command with the added caveat that its final argument must be ]. I believe this was done in an effort to make if statements look more natural, as if the [ is an operator in the language. Just ignore [ and always use test and much confusion will be avoided.

Answer 3

You can use this code as an exercise. Write an awk script for it, or start with something like
while IFS='|' read -r f1 username fullname id otherfields; do
# I don't know which field you want to test. I will rest with id
if [[ $id =~ ^0510 ]]; then
subdir=majors
else
subdir=nonmajors
fi
echo "${username}:(password):(UID):(GID):${fullname}+${id}:/home/STUDENTS/${subdir}:/bin/bash"
done < <( grep -v 'CMPSC 1513' ./cs_roster.txt | grep -P -v '(?!.*CPSMA 2923)CPSMA' )
This is nice for learning some bash syntax, but consider an awk script for avoiding a while-loop.