insert line into a new file in linux using shell script - linux

I need to write shell script to create a new file and insert some stuffs into it. The problem is, using sed 'i/blablabla' command, it only works when there is at least one line existed in the file. What is the command to insert into a new file?
Thanks

echo 'new line' >file_name
Also, you can append to the end without using sed using the >> operator:
echo 'additional line' >>file_name

More variants:
cat >>file_being_appended_to <<some_random_string
This is the first line
This is the second line and it has a variable in it; it's right here: $some_variable
some_random_string
cat >>file_being_appended_to <<'some_random_string'
This is the first line
This is the second line and it has a variable reference in it; it's right here: $some_variable,
but this variable reference is not expanded because the beginning delimiter string has single quotes around it.
some_random_string

Other variants:
echo 'This is the first line
This is the second line.' >file
some_variable="some value"
echo "This is the first line
This is the second line and it has a variable in it; it's right here: $some_variable" >file

Related

Assign full text file path to a variable and use variable as file path in sh file

I am trying to create a shell script for logs and trying to append data into a text file. I have write this sample "test.sh" code for testing:
#!/bin/sh -e
touch /home/sample.txt
SPTH = '/home/sample'.txt
echo "MY LOG FILE" >> "$SPTH"
echo "DUMP started at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> /home/sample.txt
echo "DUMP finished at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> /home/sample.txt
but in above code all lines are working correct except one line of code i.e.
echo "MY LOG FILE" >> "$SPTH"
It is giving error:
test.sh: line 6: : No such file or directory
I want to replace this full path of file "/home/sample.txt" to variable "$SPATH".
I am executing my shell script using
sh test.sh
What I am doing wrong.
Variable assignments in bash shell does not allow you to have spaces within. It will be actually interpreted as command with = and the subsequent keywords as arguments to the first word, which is wrong.
Change your code to
SPTH="/home/sample.txt"
That is the reason why SPTH was not assigned to the actual path you intended it to have. And you have no reason to have single-quote here and excluding the extension part. Using it fully within double-quotes is absolutely fine.
The syntax for the command line is that the first token is a command, tokens are separated by whitespace. So:
SPTH = '/home/sample'.txt
Has the command as SPTH, the second token is =, and so on. You might think this is daft, but most shells behave like this for historical reasons.
So you need to remove the whitespace:
SPTH='/home/sample'.txt

Assign new variable from each line of a text file

What I'm basically trying to do is automatically detect if there is text in a line, and if so create a new variable containing the text in said line , within a script. If there is no text in a line then the variable doesn't get created. I can do this manually by opening the file -
$ cat file.txt
sometxt
somemoretext
evenmoretext
...
then adding to my script the appropriate lines -
TXT=file.txt
VAR1=$(sed -n 1p $TXT)
VAR2=$(sed -n 2p $TXT)
...
but this is a pain since I have to count how many lines there are total, then copy and paste each line assigning the variables and changing 'VAR!' to 'VAR2' and '1p' to '2p'. There has to be an easier way. Thanks
#JNevil thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Heres what ended up working for me -
for var_name in (cat links.txt); do
wget <servername.com>$var_name
done
Still dont know how to use curl but this worked fine!

How to show line number when executing bash script

I have a test script which has a lot of commands and will generate lots of output, I use set -x or set -v and set -e, so the script would stop when error occurs. However, it's still rather difficult for me to locate which line did the execution stop in order to locate the problem.
Is there a method which can output the line number of the script before each line is executed?
Or output the line number before the command exhibition generated by set -x?
Or any method which can deal with my script line location problem would be a great help.
Thanks.
You mention that you're already using -x. The variable PS4 denotes the value is the prompt printed before the command line is echoed when the -x option is set and defaults to : followed by space.
You can change PS4 to emit the LINENO (The line number in the script or shell function currently executing).
For example, if your script reads:
$ cat script
foo=10
echo ${foo}
echo $((2 + 2))
Executing it thus would print line numbers:
$ PS4='Line ${LINENO}: ' bash -x script
Line 1: foo=10
Line 2: echo 10
10
Line 3: echo 4
4
http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/debuggingtips gives the ultimate PS4 that would output everything you will possibly need for tracing:
export PS4='+(${BASH_SOURCE}:${LINENO}): ${FUNCNAME[0]:+${FUNCNAME[0]}(): }'
In Bash, $LINENO contains the line number where the script currently executing.
If you need to know the line number where the function was called, try $BASH_LINENO. Note that this variable is an array.
For example:
#!/bin/bash
function log() {
echo "LINENO: ${LINENO}"
echo "BASH_LINENO: ${BASH_LINENO[*]}"
}
function foo() {
log "$#"
}
foo "$#"
See here for details of Bash variables.
PS4 with value $LINENO is what you need,
E.g. Following script (myScript.sh):
#!/bin/bash -xv
PS4='${LINENO}: '
echo "Hello"
echo "World"
Output would be:
./myScript.sh
+echo Hello
3 : Hello
+echo World
4 : World
Workaround for shells without LINENO
In a fairly sophisticated script I wouldn't like to see all line numbers; rather I would like to be in control of the output.
Define a function
echo_line_no () {
grep -n "$1" $0 | sed "s/echo_line_no//"
# grep the line(s) containing input $1 with line numbers
# replace the function name with nothing
} # echo_line_no
Use it with quotes like
echo_line_no "this is a simple comment with a line number"
Output is
16 "this is a simple comment with a line number"
if the number of this line in the source file is 16.
This basically answers the question How to show line number when executing bash script for users of ash or other shells without LINENO.
Anything more to add?
Sure. Why do you need this? How do you work with this? What can you do with this? Is this simple approach really sufficient or useful? Why do you want to tinker with this at all?
Want to know more? Read reflections on debugging
Simple (but powerful) solution: Place echo around the code you think that causes the problem and move the echo line by line until the messages does not appear anymore on screen - because the script has stop because of an error before.
Even more powerful solution: Install bashdb the bash debugger and debug the script line by line
If you're using $LINENO within a function, it will cache the first occurrence. Instead use ${BASH_LINENO[0]}

Adding text to the end of a line in bash with sed

I have variable in my script called:
VAR=/opt/sbin/test
and I want to append a text for example 'text' at the end of the line with a space and then run the line as
/opt/sbin/test text
I think the command you are looking for is:
VAR=/opt/sbin/test
VAR="$VAR text"
BLAH=$(${VAR})
The above will set $VAR to /opt/sbin/test text and then BLAH=$(${VAR}) will execute it.

How can I replace a specific line by line number in a text file?

I have a 2GB text file on my linux box that I'm trying to import into my database.
The problem I'm having is that the script that is processing this rdf file is choking on one line:
mismatched tag at line 25462599, column 2, byte 1455502679:
<link r:resource="http://www.epuron.de/"/>
<link r:resource="http://www.oekoworld.com/"/>
</Topic>
=^
I want to replace the </Topic> with </Line>. I can't do a search/replace on all lines but I do have the line number so I'm hoping theres some easy way to just replace that one line with the new text.
Any ideas/suggestions?
sed -i yourfile.xml -e '25462599s!</Topic>!</Line>!'
sed -i '25462599 s|</Topic>|</Line>|' nameoffile.txt
The tool for editing text files in Unix, is called ed (as opposed to sed, which as the name implies is a stream editor).
ed was once intended as an interactive editor, but it can also easily scripted. The way ed works, is that all commands take an address parameter. The way to address a specific line is just the line number, and the way to change the addressed line(s) is the s command, which takes the same regexp that sed would. So, to change the 42nd line, you would write something like 42s/old/new/.
Here's the entire command:
FILENAME=/path/to/whereever
LINENUMBER=25462599
ed -- "${FILENAME}" <<-HERE
${LINENUMBER}s!</Topic>!</Line>!
w
q
HERE
The advantage of this is that ed is standardized, while the -i flag to sed is a proprietary GNU extension that is not available on a lot of systems.
Use "head" to get the first 25462598 lines and use "tail" to get the remaining lines (starting at 25462601). Though... for a 2GB file this will likely take a while.
Also are you sure the problem is just with that line and not somewhere previous (ie. the error looks like an XML parse error which might mean the actual problem is someplace else).
My shell script:
#!/bin/bash
awk -v line=$1 -v new_content="$2" '{
if (NR == line) {
print new_content;
} else {
print $0;
}
}' $3
Arguments:
first: line number you want change
second: text you want instead original line contents
third: file name
This script prints output to stdout then you need to redirect. Example:
./script.sh 5 "New fifth line text!" file.txt
You can improve it, for example, by taking care that all your arguments has expected values.

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