Problem redirecting to bash shell on cygwin

sarenace · 11-14-2012, 10:07 PM

Hello,
I am working on a windows machine running the cygwin command line interface. I have a spreadsheet that contains references to records kept in a group of text files, from which I need to pull out data. Given that the data set contains >5k references, manually typing out a command for each one is not an option. I figured I could save myself some work by letting the spreadsheet concatenate the commands. This created an output like so:

Quote:

awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\n\n\n}"/80303708953/{print}' HH*txt |awk '/desolada/ && /showed/{print}'
awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\n\n\n}"/80305245858/{print}' HH*txt |awk '/sarenace/ && /showed/{print}'
awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\n\n\n}"/80305597498/{print}' HH*txt |awk '/sarenace/ && /showed/{print}'
awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\n\n\n}"/80307301507/{print}' HH*txt |awk '/bboys777/ && /showed/{print}'
...
...

On my previous fedora system at university, if I had a file full of commands as above, I would type out

Quote:

cat file |/bin/bash

The idea was I would copy the entire lot of commands and type

Quote:

cat /dev/clipboard |/bin/bash

And it failed to work, giving me a heap of syntax errors.

I have tried various solutions using combinations of backquotes, redirecting /dev/clipboard to /dev/stdin and so on; but nothing seems to work. Confusingly, when I copy and paste one command at a time directly into the cygwin shell, it works perfectly!?!? Would anyone have any idea how to fix this?

suicidaleggroll · 11-14-2012, 10:27 PM

I've never heard of piping a command into /bin/bash, but I understand the problem.

Have you tried something like a read in a loop? Ala:

Code:

while read line; do $line; done < /dev/clipboard

sarenace · 11-14-2012, 10:35 PM

Just an addendum: Ignore the mistake in the RS value ="\n\n\n}" which should read ="\n\n\n"}; that mistake was made after i had input the commands correctly.

Bash gives the following error message-

' for reading (No such file or directory)

Which I assume means that I'm redirecting this command to a bash shell that opens in the /bin folder? On my previous system when you redirected to |/bin/bash, the process ran in the interactive shell you had open, with all the commands redirected to stdout, as per normal. Perhaps this could be some peculiar environmental variable for cygwin?

sarenace · 11-14-2012, 10:41 PM

Thanks for the suggestion suicidaleggroll; unfortunately it didn't work. Still working on it. I cant figure out why on my linux box at university redirection to bash worked so seamlessly and yet on cygwin at home its the devils own job . . .

suicidaleggroll · 11-16-2012, 09:06 AM

How about

Code:

. /dev/clipboard

or

Code:

source /dev/clipboard

How did you create the file? What is the output of

Code:

file /dev/clipboard

?

ntubski · 11-16-2012, 10:00 AM

It's probably because /dev/clipboard is using DOS/Windows style line endings, try

Code:

dos2unix < /dev/clipboard | /bin/bash