script: 'for' and 'cut' problems

YaK. · 11-06-2005, 05:12 AM

Hello,

I have two problems with making a shell script.

1- If with a 'ls -lia' I got, for exampl, this result:

Code:

 98487 -rw-r--r--   1 me me    2 Nov  5 12:59 prova1  
100458 -rw-r--r--   1 me me    2 Nov  5 12:59 prova2  
100460 -rw-r--r--   1 me me    2 Nov  5 12:59 prova3  
 98616 -rw-r--r--   1 me me    2 Nov  5 12:59 prova4  
 98617 -rw-r--r--   1 me me    2 Nov  5 12:59 prova5

then, if I make in a shell script a

Code:

for abc in `ls -lia`
do .....

the value of abc first is '98487', then '-rw-r--r--', then '1', then 'me'....
Is it possible to make a 'for' storing in abc a whole line each time (first 98487 -rw-r--r-- 1 me me 2 Nov 5 12:59 prova1 , then 100458 -rw-r--r-- 1 me me 2 Nov 5 12:59 prova2 .... ) ?

2- The second question is a problem with cut: I have already red the cut man pages but I can't find anything to select from 'ls -lia' only one column (for example the protections). 'ls -lia | cut -f1 -d\ ' doesn't work, it returns 100458 and 100460 for the first column; 98487, -rw-r--r--,-rw-r--r--,98616,98617 for the second .... I could make 'ls -lia | cut -b1,2,3,4,5,6' to select the first column, but this only works if I know how large it is. If I wanted to select, for example, the name column I don't know if it is from -b22 to 28 or -b50 to 100....

Thx for help

acid_kewpie · 11-06-2005, 05:43 AM

you would change the IFS variable (Input Field Seperator) to "\n" easiest is to set it within the backticks. in fact backticks are slightly obselete now, so try using $(IFS="\n" ls ... ) instead.

acid_kewpie · 11-06-2005, 05:49 AM

oh no, hang about, that IFS is going to be in the wrong scope.... use "IFS="\n" for i in $(ls...)"