Help me sed or awk this figity config file please!

arifd86 · 01-15-2021, 01:22 PM

So if I want to programmatically add an app to the quicklaunch of lxqt-panel, they've made it somewhat frustratingly difficult to do so.

Among the config file is this relevant section

Code:

[quicklaunch]
alignment=Left
apps\1\desktop=/usr/share/applications/pcmanfm-qt.desktop
apps\2\desktop=/usr/share/applications/pavucontrol-qt.desktop
apps\size=2
type=quicklaunch

I want some sed or awk code that will find this line 'apps\size=' followed by an unkwnown number, which has to appear after a line containing '[quicklaunch]' but before any empty lines. the number must be incremented by 1 and stored into a variable so that we can then inject into the line above our desired .desktop file.

So that in this concrete example, the result will look like this:

Code:

[quicklaunch]
alignment=Left
apps\1\desktop=/usr/share/applications/pcmanfm-qt.desktop
apps\2\desktop=/usr/share/applications/pavucontrol-qt.desktop
apps\3\desktop=/path/to/app.desktop
apps\size=3
type=quicklaunch

This is rather advanced awk manipulation for me, so I appreciate your help.

Thanks!

shruggy · 01-15-2021, 01:27 PM

I'd suggest you using crudini for this.

Code:

file=panel.conf
sect=quicklaunch
param='apps\size'
crudini --set "$file" "$sect" "$param" \
  $(( $(crudini --get "$file" "$sect" "$param" 2>/dev/null)+1 ))

awk may look easier in this particular case

Code:

awk -F= -vOFS== \
  '/^\[quicklaunch\]$/,/^$/{if($1=="apps\\size")$2++}1' \
  panel.conf

but I prefer using dedicated tools where they exist.

MadeInGermany · 01-15-2021, 03:54 PM

The following adds and increments

Code:

awk -v insert="/path/to/app.desktop" '
  BEGIN { FS=OFS="=" } $1=="[quicklaunch]" { q=1 } NF==0 { q=0 } q && $1=="apps\\size" { print ("apps\\" ++$2 "\\desktop"), insert } 1
' panel.conf

arifd86 · 01-16-2021, 04:51 AM

Great stuff! I really gotta learn AWK properly one day! Thank you.

Thanks for the crudini suggestion also, but awk is preferable for a single task than relying on and installing extra software.