I'm currently working on a Bash script that simulates rolling a number of 6-sided dice. This is all taking place within a virtual machine running Debian that's acting as a server. Essentially, my webpage simulates rolling the dice by using the query string to determing the number of dice to be rolled.
For instance, if my URL is http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/rolldice.sh?6, I want the webpage to say "You rolled 6 dice" and then, on the next line, print six numbers between 1 and 6 inclusive (that are of course "randomly" generated).
Currently, printing out the "You rolled x dice" header is working fine. However, I'm having trouble with the next part. I'm very new to Bash, so possibly the syntax or something similar is wrong with my loop. Here it is:
for i in {1..$QUERY_STRING }; do
dieRoll = $(( $RANDOM % 6 + 1))
echo $dieRoll
done
Can anyone help me figure out where I'm going wrong? I'll be happy to post the rest of rolldice.sh if needed.
Since .. requires its arguments to be literals, you have to use eval to substitute the variable:
for i in $(eval "echo {1..$QUERY_STRING}"); do
Or if you have the seq command, you can do:
for i in $(seq 1 "$QUERY_STRING")
I recommend the latter -- using eval with input from the user is very dangerous.
Related
I am currently working on a small command line interface tool that someone not very familiar with bash could run from their computer. I have changed content for confidentiality, however functionality has remained the same.
The user would be given a prompt
the user would then respond with their answer(s)
From this, I would be given two bits of information:
1.their responses now as individual variables
2.the number of variables that I have now been given: this value is now a variable as well
my current script is as follows
echo List your favorite car manufacturers
read $car1 $car2 $car3 #end user can list as many as they wish
for n in {1..$numberofmanufacturers} #finding the number of
variables/manufactures is my second question
do
echo car$n
done
I am wanting to allow for the user to enter as many car manufacturers as they please (1=<n), however I need each manufacturer to be a different variable. I also need to be able to automate the count of the number of manufacturers and have that value be its own new variable.
Would I be better suited for having the end user create a .txt file in which they list (vertically) their manufactures, thus forcing me to use wc -l to determine the number of manufacturers?
I appreciate any help in advance.
As I said in the comment, whenever you want to use multiple dynamically created variables, you should check if there isn't a better data structure for your use case; and in almost all cases there will be. Here is the implementation using bash arrays. It prints out the contents of the input array in three different ways.
echo List your favorite car manufacturers
# read in an array, split on spaces
read -a cars
echo Looping over array values
for car in "${cars[#]}"
do
echo $car
done
echo Looping over array indices
for i in ${!cars[#]}
do
echo ${cars[$i]}
done
echo Looping from 0 to length-1
let numcars=${#cars[#]}
for i in $(seq 0 $((numcars-1)))
do
echo ${cars[$i]}
done
I'm almost completely new to Linux programming, and Bash Scripts. I build an amateur radio AllStar node.
I'm trying to create a script that looks at a certain variable and based on that info decides if it should connect or not. I can use a command: asterisk -rx "rpt showvars 47168. This returns a list of variables and their current values. I can store the whole list into a variable that I define, in my test script I just called it MYVAR but I can't seem to only get the value of one of the variables that's listed.
I talked to someone who knows a lot about Linux programming, and she suggested that I try CONNECTED="${MYVAR[3]}" but when I do this, CONNECTED just seems to become a blank variable.
What really frustrates me is I have written programs in other programming languages, and I've been told Bash scripts are easy to learn, but yet I can't seem to get this.
So any help would be great.
how did you assigned your variable?
It seems to me that you want to work with an array, then:
#!/bin/bash
myvar=( $( asterisk -rx "rpt showvars 47168 ) )
echo ${mywar[3]} # this is your fourth element
echo ${#myvar[#]} # this is the total of element in your array
be careful that index in an array starts at 0
I have defined a variable inside one of the shell script to create the file name with date value in it.
I used "date +%Y%m%d" command to insert the current date which was defined in date_val variable.
And I have defined the filename variable to have "${path}/sample_${date_val}.txt
For few days it was creating the file name properly as /programfiles/sample_20180308.txt
But today the filename was created without date as /programfiles/sample_.txt
When I try to execute the command "date +%Y%m%d" in linux, it is returning the correct value - 20180309.
Any idea why the filename was created without the date value ??? . I did not modify anything in my script too. So wondering what might have gone wrong.
Sample excerpt of my script is given below for easy understanding :
EDITED
path=/programfiles
date_val=$(date +%Y%m%d )
file_name=${path}/sample_${date_val}.txt
Although incredibly unlikely, it's certainly possible for date to fail, based on the source code. Under the covers, it calls either clock_gettime() or gettimeofday(), both of which can fail.
The date program will also refuse to output anything to standard output if the date from either of those two functions is out of range during the call to (which is possible if they fail).
It's also possible that the date program could "disappear" for various reasons, such as actually being hidden or permissions changed, or a shortage of resources like file handles when attempting to open the executable.
As mentioned, all these possibilities are a stretch, unlikely to happen in the real world.
If you want to handle the case where you get inadequate output from date, you can simply try until you get a valid one, something like (with the possibility of adding some limit to detect if it's never any good):
todaysDate="$(date +%Y%m%d)"
while [[ ! $x =~ ^[0-9]{8}$ ]] ; do
sleep 1
todaysDate="$(date +%Y%m%d)"
done
# todaysDate now guaranteed to be eight digits.
I have a (bash) script on a server that I have inherited the administration aspect of, and have recently discovered a flaw in the script that nobody has brought to my attention.
After discovering the issue, others have told me that it has been irritating them, but never told me (great...)
So, the script follows this concept
#!/bin/bash
function refreshscreen(){
# This function refreshes a "statistics screen"
...
echo "Enter command to override update"
read -t 10 variable
}
This script refreshes a statistics screen, and allows the user to stall the update in lieu of commands built into a case statement. However, the read times-out (read -t 10) after 10 seconds, regardless of if the user is typing.
Long story short, is there a way to prevent read from timing out if the user is actively typing a command? Best case scenario would be a "Time out of SEC idle/inactive seconds" opposed to just timeout after x seconds.
I have thought about running a background script at the end of the cycle before the read command pauses the screen to check for inactivity, but have not found a way to make that command work.
You can use read in a loop, reading one character at a time, and adding it to a final read string. This would then give the user some timeout amount of time per character rather than per command. Here's a sample function you might be able to incorporate into your script that shows what I'm talking about:
read_with_idle_timeout() {
local input=""
read -t 10 -N 1 variable
while [ ! -z $variable ]
do
input+=$variable
read -t 10 -N 1 variable
done
echo "Read: $input"
}
This will give the user 10 seconds to type each character. If they stop typing, you'll get as much of the command as they had started typing before the timeout occurred, and then your case statement can handle it. Perhaps you can store the final string in a global variable, or just put this code directly into your other function.
If you need more than one word, since read breaks on $IFS, you could call this function multiple times until you get all the input you're expecting.
I have searched for a simple solution that will do the following:
timeout after 10 seconds, if there is no user input at all
the user has infinite time to finish his answer if the first character was typed within the first 10 sec.
This can be implemented in two lines as follows:
read -N 1 -t 10 -p "What is your name? > " a
[ "$a" != "" ] && read b && echo "Your name is $a$b" || echo "(timeout)"
In case the user waits 10 sec before he enters the first character, the output will be:
What is your name? > (timeout)
If the user types the first character within 10 sec, he has unlimited time to finish this task. The output will look like follows:
What is your name? > Oliver
Your name is Oliver
Caveat: the first character is not editable, once it was typed, while all other characters can be edited (backspace and re-type). Any ideas for a simple solution?
Just want to share with you something I did not easily find by myself...
I am a newbie in shell script and was just wondering how can I increment a value of a an associative array.
Let's assume this script:
#!/bin/bash
declare -A b # declare an associative array
a="aaa"
b[$a]=1
echo ${b[#]} # display all the values
echo ${b[$a]} # display the first value (1)
echo ${b[aaa]} # display the first value as well (1)
The solution can be
((b[$a]++))
echo ${b[#]} # display 2
Now that I found it, it seems evident, but I spent some time to get it...
I hope this can save some time to people :)
As describe above, the solution can be
((b[$a]++)) # or (('b[$a]'++)) for a more secure way as pointed by #gniourf_gniourf
echo ${b[#]} # display 2
Now that I found it, it seems evident, but I spent some time to get it...
I hope this can save some time to people :)