sh, Bourne problem

kdyzsa · 05-08-2008, 09:45 PM

This is a new exercise for me
1.) Create a bourne shell script that can accept 2 arguments/parameters. Name your script as housekeep_files.sh.

2.) The script will delete the files specified in the input file (1st parameter) and will send a notification through email (2nd parameter) the list of files deleted.

Sample input file: /home/mis/training/tanzs/files_to_delete.txt
ex. files_to_delete.txt
man.txt
see.txt
go.txt
no.txt

Being relatively new to this type of programming, I don't know how to approach this. How can I get the man.txt and seperate it from see.txt?
Is there any way to loop this and put it in an array while it is not end of file? Also does bourne support array? so i can put these text into an array? file[i]=??
Edit/Delete Message

gilead · 05-08-2008, 10:19 PM

Since this sounds like a homework question I'm going to suggest you have a look at the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide and have a go at solving the problem yourself. Commands like find and ls can tell you what files are in a directory and the info in that link will help you process them.

Once you've tried it, please post any specific problems you are having - people will be happy to help, but won't do your work for you...

eggixyz · 05-08-2008, 10:20 PM

Hey There,

Bourne doesn't support real array, but you can fake them using eval. In this instance, if you just to read a file and act on each line, you can do it with a simple "while read" loop, like:

Code:

while read line
do
    YOUR ACTION $line
done<files_to_delete.txt

Hope that gets you going

, Mike

gilead · 05-09-2008, 02:15 PM

According to this, one dimensional arrays are supported in newer versions of bash - it doesn't give version numbers though.

eggixyz · 05-09-2008, 06:55 PM

Hey There,

Hmmm... Sounds like the Bourne Again Shell rather than the original Bourne Shell. I know that as (which is to bash as sh is to ksh, for the most part) supports them.

It depends on what your instructor wants. If he/she's asking you to write a Bourne script in Linux, it's almost impossible

, Mike

eggixyz · 05-09-2008, 06:59 PM

BTW,

If you are using bash you can just create them like in ksh

bob[0]=whatever

or the old way

typeset -a bob
or
declare -a bob

before adding members.

and then reference all members with ${bob[@]) or ${bob:0:1} - depending on the syntax that's supports. The newer is arrayname:element:numberOfElements, so you can specify 2 or more in the last field and get a slice/range of the array.

Best wishes,

Mike