Hello all

i am just starting to learn how to program in bash, an i have a problem, i am trying compare values inbetween 2 values (from another file), so far my solution is to make a nested for loop, but that causes it to compare every value. Here is a visulization of what i want

file.a 2,3,4,5

file.b
3 5
6 9
1 2
4 7

i want the values 2, 3, 4, 5 from file.a to be compared inbetween values 3 5, 6 9,1 2, 4 7 from file.b

i have come up with this solution

(var1 is the value im comparing, var2 is the less value, var 3 is the greater value)

for i in $var1
do
for k in $var2
do
for l in $var 3
do
if [$i -gt $k ] && [$i -lt $l]
then
blah blah blah
done done done

my problem with the above code is it compares EVERYINNG, not the values inbetween what i want (which is 3 5, 6 9 etc).

please help
thank you!!

There is probably an easier way to do this, but I would create three arrays: one with the contents of file.a, the second with the contents of the first column in file.b, and the third with the contents of the second column in file.b. The array contents would be

array1 = {2,3,4,5}
array2 = {3,6,1,4}
array3 = {5,9,2,7}

Then you can loop through the comparisons by array position.

Well I think I understand the comparing part of the question, but I don't seem to see anywhere what the expected output is?

hello

thanks for your reply! my expected output would be to find wich values from file.a, belong inbetween wich group from file.b.
example.

3 5,----> 3,4,5
6 9,----> null
1 2,----> 2
4 7,----> 4,5

(All this i wish it to be put into a text file showing which values are inbetween which range)

my version so fare just compares everything so it places all the values inbetween every possible combination :S

also to thesnow

your solution seems possible but not sure how to loop through an array based on its array position, (would it be like java, just grab the index say array[1], array[2]?? or place it in a for loop to iterate ...array[i] i++...)

So your output is not the same as what you originally asked for as now the numbers from file.a are between AND inclusive (quite a different thing)

So maybe:

I also came up with this piece of code while i was playing around. this code seems to work only it duplicates the values about 3 times!!! argh


for (( i = 0; i < ${#array[@]} ; i++ ))
do
for (( j = 0 ; j < ${#array[@]} ; j++ ))
do
if [ "${array[j]}" -gt "${array2[i]}" ] && [ "${array[j]}" -lt "${array3[i]}" ]
then
echo etc etc
fi
done
done



grail, im gonna try your solution, but i noticed that it has 2 apostrophes on each side of the code, are they supposed to be there?

Yes otherwise awk will get upset. You can run mine straight from the command line.

I would stress again that you have asked for inclusive in post #4 so even your code will need to change to >= and <= NOT > and <

ahh yes i see that lol, its still in beta testing hahaha,