[SOLVED] basic bash help (for, cat, grep): cross reference matching between files

NoWone · 10-18-2009, 05:37 AM

Hello,
I'm trying to do something very basic in bash. It's a kind of cross-reference matching between 2 files.

I have a file1.txt. It's like this:

Code:

item1
item3
item4
...

I Have a file2.txt. It's like this:

Code:

item1       "Properties of item1"
item2       "Properties of item2"
item3       "Properties of item3"
item4       "Properties of item4"
item5       "Properties of item5"
...

My goal is to print out the lines in file2 that contains lines present in file1.

I do:

Code:

for i in $(cat file1.txt); do grep $i file2.txt; done

but I get no output. Will someone please tell me where am I mistaking?

Thanks!

David the H. · 10-18-2009, 06:04 AM

It's working fine for me. Have you made absolutely sure that the two files have identical strings?

BTW, I suggest using a while loop and a redirect instead, so you can avoid calling the external cat program. Also, you should quote your variable expansion and sed expression. Finally, you can add a "^" to the sed expression to ensure that you only match strings that appear at the beginning of a line.

Code:

while read i; do grep "^$i" file2.txt; done <file1.txt

syg00 · 10-18-2009, 06:11 AM

Looks like it should work (in bash).

NoWone · 10-18-2009, 09:11 AM

Solved.

The problem was: file1.txt wasn't in Unix format - it had \r\n s instead of just \n s. Don't ask me why, now it's working with both for and while.

Thank you!