hi there every one i am a beginner at linux and would really appreciate if someone would be able to help with the following problem. and could yorl explain each step as well since i would like to unerstand whats going on. Thanks> the question is:
Let us assume that in a directory there are some text files whose lines are in no particular order.
Write a script accepting as input any three of these f iles, sorting their lines in alphabetical
order, taking the last lines of these sorted files and creating an output le having these three lines
sorted in reverse alphabetical order.
Tip: use `tail'.The script has to check that only three les are given as input when your script is invoked and
give error messages if more or less than three les are given as input or if any of the input les
does not exist. You have to consider that one, two or three of the input les do not exist and give
one error message

This sounds remarkably like homework... Do you want to tell us what you've written already to have a go at the problem, and where you've got stuck? That will help both you and other people with similar questions more

hey okay dis is what i have so far

!/bin/bash
if [ "$#" -ne 3 ]
then
echo "usage: $0 <file1> <file2> <file3>" 1>&2
exit 1
fi

# The file names are "$1", "$2", and "$3".
# What do you want to do with them?

# Here we will read one line from each file, and merge the results to the output
{
while [ 1 ]
do
read -u 3 LINE1
read -u 4 LINE2
read -u 5 LINE3
if [ "$LINE1" != "" -o "$LINE2" != "" -o "$LINE3" != "" ]
then
echo "$LINE1 | $LINE2 | $LINE3"
else
break # Ends while loop
fi
done
} 3<"$1" 4<"$2" 5<"$3"

Ok...where are you stuck?? What error(s) are you getting??

A couple of small tips
should be
also, try
as the 2nd line; shows you what the parser is doing/seeing.

Useful links
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

1 members found this post helpful.

Since nobody has mentioned it, please use descriptive thread titles in future, like you're told to when posting threads. Also, please avoid using "urgent" in thread titles, as your problem isn't urgent for anyone here.