Counting grep result wont work in bash script - linux

Question

My question is not easy to ask, I try explain the problem with the following example:
/home/luther/tipical_surnames.txt
Smith
Johnson
Williams
Jones
Brown
#Davis
Miller
Wilson
#Moore
Taylor
Anderson
/home/luther/employers.txt
2000 Johnson A lot-of details / BJC3000,6000, i550 0
2101 Smith A lot-of details / BJC3000,6000, i550 0
2102 Smith A lot-of details / BJC3000,6000, i550 0
2103 Jones A lot-of details / BJC3000,6000, i550 0
2104 Johnson A lot-of details / BJC3000,6000, i550 0
2100 Smith A lot-of details / BJC3000,6000, i550 0
I have a list with the favorite surnames and another with the name of employers.
Let's check how many people have the most popular surname in the company, using console:
grep -v "#" /home/luther/tipical_surnames.txt | sed -n 1'p' | cut -f 1
Smith
grep Smith /home/luther/employers.txt | wc -l
230
Work perfect.
Now lets check the first 5 most popular surnames using a simple bash script:
#!/bin/bash
counter=1
while [ $counter -le 5 ]
do
surname=`grep -v "#" /home/luther/tipical_surnames.txt | sed -n "$counter"'p' | cut -f 1`
qty=`grep "$surname" /home/luther/employers.txt | wc -l`
echo $surname
echo $qty
counter=$(( $counter + 1 ))
done
And the result the follows:
Smith
0
Johnson
0
Williams
0
Jones
0
Brown
0
Whats wrong?
Update:
Like I wrote I tested the script on other computer and everything is works fine.
After I try the follow:
root#problematic:/var/www# cat testfile.bash
#!/bin/bash
for (( c=1; c<=5; c++ ))
{
echo $c
}
root#problematic:/var/www# bash testfile.bash
testfile.bash: line 2: syntax error near unexpected token `$'\r''
'estfile.bash: line 2: `for (( c=1; c<=5; c++ ))
root#problematic:/var/www# echo $BASH_VERSION
4.2.37(1)-release
root#problematic:/var/www#
Of course on other computer this simply script work as expected, without error.

Answer 1

This is obviously untested since you haven't posted sample input but this is the kind of approach you should use:
awk '
NR==FNR { if (!/#/) cnt[$1]=0; next }
{ cnt[$WHATEVER]++ }
END {
PROCINFO["sorted_in"] = "#val_num_desc"
for (name in cnt) {
print name, cnt
if (++c == 5) {
break
}
}
}
' /home/luther/tipical_surnames.txt /home/luther/employers.txt
Replace "WHATEVER" with the field number where employee surnames are stored in employers.txt.
The above uses GNU awk for sorted_in, with other awks I'd just remove the PROCINFO line and the count from the output loop and pipe the output to sort then head, e.g.:
awk '
NR==FNR { if (!/#/) cnt[$1]=0; next }
{ cnt[$WHATEVER]++ }
END {
for (name in cnt) {
print name, cnt
}
}
' /home/luther/tipical_surnames.txt /home/luther/employers.txt | sort -k2,1nr | head -5
or whatever the right sort options are.

Answer 2

I'm actually not quite sure. I tested your script, by copying it and pasting it, with imagined data (/usr/share/dict/words) and it seems to work as expected. I wonder if there is a difference between the script you posted and the script you're running?
While at it, I took the liberty of making it run a bit smoother. Notice how, in the loop, you read the entirety of the surnames file in each iteration? Also, grep + wc -l may be replaced by grep -c. I'm also adding -F to the first invocation of grep since the pattern (#) is fixed strings. The grep into the employee file uses \<$name\> to make sure we only get the Johns and no Johnssons when $name is John.
#!/bin/bash
employees_in="/usr/share/dict/words"
names_in="/usr/share/dict/words"
grep -v -F "#" "$names_in" | head -n 5 | cut -f 1 |
while read -r name; do
count="$( grep -c "\<$names\> " "$employees_in" )"
printf "name: %-10s\tcount: %d\n" "$name" "$count"
done
Testing it:
$ bash script.sh
name: A count: 1
name: a count: 1
name: aa count: 1
name: aal count: 1
name: aalii count: 1
Note: I get only ones in the count because the dictionary (not surprisingly) contains only unique words.