Reading crontab into bash array

nutthick · 05-22-2006, 09:41 AM

I'm trying to get the contents of my crontab into a bash array with the following code

Code:

crontab -l > /home/test/cron.tmp

declare -a crons

exec 0</home/test/cron.tmp
while read line
do
crons($line)
done

echo ${crons[@]} 1> /home/test/out.tmp

The problem I'm having, is whenever the script comes across a '*' in the cron file, it echos the contents of the current directory instead of echoing a '*'.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

Disillusionist · 05-22-2006, 12:43 PM

Have you tried quoting the variable?

echo "${crons[@]}" 1> /home/test/out.tmp

or

echo '${crons[@]}' 1> /home/test/out.tmp

nutthick · 05-22-2006, 12:44 PM

Thanks for the reply, I've just solved it by using printf to write to the file instead of echo.