Shell script that assign's values to fields
 

In need of help? I need a shell script that will read a line and assign values to each field.
Using /etc/group as an example you have

groupid:x:501:userid,userid,userid

using sed I am able to set the delimiters to a comman value e.g. a comma

Could someone show me how I could use a shell script to read each line and assign a value to each field in that line. I know how to do a fixed or static assignment but since each line in /etc/group will vary on how many fields it has I need to do some kind of loop.

output would maybe look something like this:
f1 f2 f3 f4 f5...


Note: I am VERY new to scripting! So explanations would be GREATLY appreciated.

Moin,

in the case of unknown number of fields you should use an array:
Jan

Thank you
 

Thank you for your follow up. I do have one question. How to you extract information from the array. Say I wanted info from line 2 field 0 and 3?

you can use awk, which makes manipulating files with fields easier

Yves.

Moin,

that's not difficult:

Jan

Jan61 you have been very helpful
 

Thank you for you help and I hate to keep bothering you. I'm still stuck on this script though. Maybe telling you want the script needs to do will help. I wanted to figure it out myself but sometimes a little help doesn't hurt. I need a script that will look at the /etc/group file and pull the group and the users that are assigned to that group in this format.
group a user1
group a user2
group a user3
group b user1
group b user2

etc...

This is a request someone gave me! Not my idea :(

I like your array idea and I have come close on getting information out but it's the incrementing that doesn't seem to work. Here is what I have so far. It's not pretty.

!/bin/bash
# redefine Input Field Separator
IFS=':,
'
# now : and linefeed are field / record separator
# now read the /etc/group line per line into the array ln
getent group | while read -a ln; do
# now print each element of the array
for (( fld = 0; fld < ${#ln[*]}; fld++ ));
do
x=0
y=3
z="x+2"
who=${ln[x]}
objects=${ln[z]}
echo $who $objects
done
done

The output produces the group and the second field and repeats it for however many fields there are.
I know I must be totally off using the X Y Z variables? Any ideas?

Sometimes a little skulduggery can make the task easier when dealing with shell scripts. In the example below I use tr to convert the ',' to a space so that the for loop works correctly rather than trying to parse around the ','.

Thanks GazL
 

That seems to work! Any way you can break it down for me? I think I understand almost everything you have done but I'm not sure how you are getting the users? Is it from this statement:
read group password gid user_list
then user_list is seen as one field and then broken up by the tr statement?

The read command will split each line of /etc/group into 4 fields delimited by colon ( because of the IFS=: ) and assign each field to one of the 4 variables listed.

The 4th field user_list will contain a comma separated list of all the users in that group. e.g. "user1,user2,user3"

The for loop is intended to be used to loop through a space separated list of values so without any changes the for would see only a single value and run just once. Within the loop $user would be "user1,user2,user3". Which is not what we want

The tr "," " " will convert
"user1,user2,user3"
to
"user1 user2 user3" which the for loop will then see as 3 separate values to loop through instead of just one.

Thanks again GazL
 

after replying to your last post a did more research on loops. After understanding what the for user in does. Your script made sense. Any scripting sites you recommend for newbies like me?

Good stuff. :)


I've not really looked at any of them myself in any great detail so its hard to make a recommendation. There's some good stuff on tldp.org. If you google for 'bash tutorial' you'll find more than enough stuff too keep you in reading for a good while.

Moin,

now I got the point ;-) I didn't read your post carefully enough, so I didn't realize, that there's no variable list of fields in your output (the user's list has a different field delimiter than a ":").

The solution of GazL is IMHO the shortest you can get - except one line: I don't like external command calls in a loop ;-)

You can do the user list splitting using bash builtins (parameter expansion) instead of using external tr:

Jan

Thanks Jan
 

How would you get the same result using an array?

Good point jan. I should have thought of that myself. :)