I am trying to search the passwd file for a specific gid, and then dump those results into a file. I have almost all of the code, except i can't seem to get only those that match. Can someone please help?

Hi mimf,

Why don't you post what you have. While you're waiting for a reply you could look up "match" under "man perlop". Hit "/" then type "match", use "n" to go forward.

John

ok, here's that part that i have so far:

#!/usr/bin/perl

open(PASSWD, '/etc/passwd');

print "Enter the group id you want to search for:\n";
$group = <STDIN>;

if($group =~ /[0-9]+/)
{ while (<PASSWD>) {
chomp;
($login, $passwd, $uid, $gid, $gcos, $home, $shell) = split (/:/);
if($gid = $group) #This is where i get stuck
{ while (<PASSWD>) {
chomp;
($login, $passwd, $uid, $gid,
$gcos, $home, $shell) = split (/:/);
print "Enter the filename where you want to
see the results:\n";
$filename = <STDIN>;
{open(MYFILE, ">>$filename");
print MYFILE "$gid $login\n";
close(MYFILE);}}}}}

But its not matching the right gid's and placing them in the file. Again, thanks for any help i can get.

Hi mimf,

It's a classic error (I still make it myself).

"$gid = $group" means set the variable gid to the same value as the variable group. The operation succeeds (why wouldn't it) and returns the value true. Which means that line is the same thing as "if (1)".

Double equals signs, "==", means compare numbers.

I didn't spend much time looking at the rest of the script but am not sure you really want to have another "while (<PASSWD>)" loop inside the first one, and you almost certainly don't want to be asking for the output filename in any loop.

Good luck finishing off,

John

John,

The reason why i was asking for the filename inside the while loop is because i wanted to make sure the $group requested matched that $gid before asking for the filename. Otherwise it would ask for the filename before checking if the $group requested was even valid. Although it makes sense what you said because when i run it, it kept asking for a filename hehe. I appreciate your help.

Mario

Hi Mario,

If you don't want to bother the user for a filename when the search term wasn't found, you could save the hit to some arbitrary filename and ask the user for a new name at the end of the loop, then rename the file to that.

John