Ok I have a newbie Q.. I script heavily in the Windows World (I know I'm a trader but, I'm starting to love the power of the dark-side) and trying to learn bash scripting. What I'm trying to do is create a script that will read the output from ls and set a variable for each element it returns. I am looking more so for the extension of the file that is returned. For example in the windows world it would be



for /f "tokens=2 delims=." %%i in ('dir c:\home\fred.* /b') do set ext=%%i


The main thing I'm looking for is in Linux, read the contents of a directory for a file that starts with a certain name. Then sets the extension of that file as a variable so it can be used later on in the script.

This is what I have so far.

=====================================
#!/bin/sh
if test -z $2 ; then
echo Need input
echo $0 vm_to_move target_server
exit $?
fi

ls -al /home/vmware/vmware/$1/$1.vmx |grep -i "vmx" >/dev/null #this is where I would use the windows command from above

if [ $? = 0 ]
then
ext=vmx
elif [ $? = 1 ]
then
ext=cfg

fi


#makes dir on remote host
echo making /home/vmware/vmware/$1 on $2
ssh vmware@$2 mkdir /home/vmware/vmware/$1

#copying home files
echo copying config files from /home/vmware/vmware/$1 to $2
scp /home/vmware/vmware/$1/* vmware@$2:/home/vmware/vmware/$1

#register vm on new host
echo registering $1 on $2
ssh vmware@$2 vmware-cmd -s register /home/vmware/vmware/$1/$1.$ext

#copying image file
echo copying /vmfs/vol1/$1 to $2:/vmfs/vol1
scp /vmfs/vol1/$1* vmware@$2:/vmfs/vol1

==============================================

I am looking for a way to read the extension instead of having it hard coded.

Any and all help with this would be greatly appreciated! THANKS!!!!!!

Hi, and welcome to LQ!

What does %%i do in the windows script?

I can't fully understand what exactly you're
after ...

But if you want to do a grep and be able to use
the bit after the period you may want to have a
closer look at sed or awk...


Cheers,
Tink

Try 'echo $filename | rev | cut -d . -f 1 | rev'
rev reverses whatever it's given and cut will search up to the first . and return everything before that.

Whenever you use for in a bath file you have to use 2 %% before the variable.

Excerpt: (from for /?)
To use the FOR command in a batch program, specify %%variable instead
of %variable.

Thanks that give me the extension but how do I set a variable from that output?

variable_name=`echo $filename | rev | cut -d . -f 1 | rev`
Notice before echo and after rev are `(backtick) not '(single quote). Very important. Backticks tell the shell to execute the command before assignment. ` can be found right next to '1' on the keyboard.

Sweet!!! Thank you very much sir!

You're welcome.