Shell Script to parse a file

JamesAvery22 · #1 (**permalink**) 11-15-04, 14:38

Any chance someone knows of a simple example of a unix shell script that parses a simple input file?

I am given an input file that looks like this:
---------
label1 = somedata
label2 = moredata
... a bunch more of the same format
label9 = evenmoredata
SpecialLabel = DataLabel
dataR1C1 dataR1C2 dataR1C3 dataR1C4 dataR1C5
dataR2C1 dataR2C2 dataR2C3 dataR2C4 dataR2C5
dataR3C1 dataR3C2 dataR3C3 dataR3C4 dataR3C5
dataR4C1 dataR4C2 dataR4C3 dataR4C4 dataR4C5
dataR5C1 dataR5C2 dataR5C3 dataR5C4 dataR5C5
dataR6C1 dataR6C2 dataR6C3 dataR6C4 dataR6C5
---------

What I have to do is call another shell script and pass in the data in that file as arguements.

What I was thinking of doing is reading in each label and data set and storing the data into a variable then calling the other shell script and passing it that $variable. but I have no idea how to do that.
The only tricky part, well to me, is the "SpecialLabel = DataLabel" just means the format changes from "label = data" to that table. The only thing I need from that table is the third column. If I do awk ' {print $3 }' input.file then I get all the data I need since it just gets the third arguement for each line, but how do I put all that data into variables?
I have to take each value in the third column and turn it into a single string delimited by commas, im guessing something like this: nawk -v RS='' -v OFS="," '$1=$1' input.inp, but that just does the whole file.
Well one more tricky part is I will only need some of the "label = data" lines depending on what label really is. So if label = "SERVER" i want to set the SERVER variable to the data. The order is never guaranteed either =\

vgersh99 · #2 (**permalink**) 11-15-04, 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamesAvery22

Any chance someone knows of a simple example of a unix shell script that parses a simple input file?

So say the file looks like this:
label1=data1
label2=data2
...

I just need to get data into a variables to pass to another shell script. I have to call that other script within my script and pass the data via arguements.

say your file is var.txt and it contains

Quote:

label1=data1
label2=data2

and your script is avery.ksh and you call other.ksh script with arguments l1 and l2

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

echo "whatever is here"

# 'source' the content of the 'var.txt' - all the  variable definitions from 
# var.txt become available as variables in the context of 'avery.ksh' 
# invokation.
. var.txt

other.ksh -l1 "${label1}" -l2 "${label2}"

something like that?

JamesAvery22 · #3 (**permalink**) 11-15-04, 15:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by vgersh99

say your file is var.txt and it contains

and your script is avery.ksh and you call other.ksh script with arguments l1 and l2

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

echo "whatever is here"

# 'source' the content of the 'var.txt' - all the  variable definitions from 
# var.txt become available as variables in the context of 'avery.ksh' 
# invokation.
. var.txt

other.ksh -l1 "${label1}" -l2 "${label2}"

something like that?

That makes it very easy... Guessing it doesnt matter there are sometimes spaces and/or tabs between "label = data?" and I just edited my post a lot =\ how do I deal with that table?

Thanks a lot btw.

edit---

also, the name of the file is given into my shell script as an argument, can I just do ". $1" if the name of the file is the first argument instead of ". var.txt"?

JamesAvery22 · #4 (**permalink**) 11-15-04, 16:04

Hrmmm the ". input.inp" didnt work. It just says "not found" for every line.

So for this line : label1 = data

it says "label1: not found"

JamesAvery22 · #5 (**permalink**) 11-15-04, 17:42

If someone could help me out Id appreciate it. What I wanted to do was loop through the input.inp file line by line like this

Code:

while [ true ]
	do
	read X#read a line
	if [ $? -ne 0 ] #Break if EOF
		then
		break 
	fi
	export testcase=`echo $X | cut -f3-3 -d" "`
	if [ $testcase == "DataLabel" ] #Break if EOF or you hit SpecialLabel = DataLabel, DataLabel is a special word, so if the third word is DataLabel then stop
		then
		break 
	fi
	echo export $X
done < $1 

echo $0: Executing command: other.cmd "${JOBNUMBER}" "${SERVER}" "${DATABASE}" "${USERID}" "${PASSWORD}" "${ENVIR}" "${REPORTNAME}" "${REPORTTITLE}" "${PAYDATE}"

How can I remove whitespace from $X?

And I still have no idea how to handle the table part.

JamesAvery22 · #6 (**permalink**) 11-15-04, 18:52

Well I got it working pretty much:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

export REMICDATA='notfound' 
export serials='NULL' 

while read line 
	do
	if [ $? -ne 0 ] #Break if EOF 
		then
		break 
	fi
	export testremic=`echo $line | tr -d " \t"i`
	if [ $testremic == "DATA=REMIC" ] #Break if you hit DATA = REMIC
		then
		REMICDATA="found" 
	fi
	if [ $REMICDATA == "found" ]
		then
		if [ $testremic != "DATA=REMIC" ] 
			then
			if [ $serials == "NULL" ] 
				then
				export serials=`echo $line | cut -f3-3 -d" "` 
			else
				export serials=$serials,`echo $line | cut -f3-3 -d" "`
			fi
		fi
	else
		export exportstring=`echo $line | tr -d " \t"i` 
		export $exportstring
	fi
done < $1 


echo $0: Executing command: other.cmd "${JOBNUMBER}" "${SERVER}" "${DATABASE}" "${USERID}" "${PASSWORD}" "${ENVIR}" "${REPORTNAME}" "${REPORTTITLE}" "${PAYDATE}" ${serials}

But it goes in an infinite loop if I dont pass the file name, how can I check to make sure a file is there and I can open it?

And this thing is verrry slow. Im guessing I shouldnt be doing that loop or something. If someone could please point me towards the correct way on doing this I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks

JamesAvery22 · #7 (**permalink**) 11-18-04, 10:25

Would someone mind looking at my while loop? I cant see anything wrong with it and its taking forever. Are loops typically a bad thing in shell scripting?

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