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escape space characters in loop from file

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# 1  
Old 12-04-2009
escape space characters in loop from file
Hi Everyone!

I want to build sql inserts from a list of countries/regions saved in a file. The list looks like this:

Code:
United Kingdom
Czech Republic
...

The script I run is:

Code:
while read i; 

do 
   var=`expr $var + 1`; 
   echo "INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES($var, '$i','$i');" >> inserts.sql; 

done < countries.txt;

The problem is that this is the result I get:

Code:
INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES(2573, 'United','United');
INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES(2574, 'Kingdom','Kingdom');
INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES(2571, 'Czech','Czech');
INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES(2572, 'Republic','Republic');

How can I escape the space characters from the file?

I've seen the solutions in this forum, but they don't work for me.
# 2  
Old 12-04-2009
Hi.

What should the SQL look like?

I get quite a different result to you:

Code:
$ cat file1
United Kingdom
Czech Republic

$ cat Test
var=1
while read i;
do
   echo "INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES($var, '$i','$i');"
   let var=$var+1
done < file1

$ ./Test
INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES(1, 'United Kingdom','United Kingdom');
INSERT INTO calltypes VALUES(2, 'Czech Republic','Czech Republic');

# 3  
Old 12-04-2009
My output looks like scottn's. i should contain the whole line, not only what is separated by spaces.

---------- Post updated at 03:57 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:53 PM ----------

What shell are you using?

And could you try out a simple
Code:
while read LINE; do
    echo $LINE
done < countries.txt

Last edited by zaxxon; 12-04-2009 at 11:01 AM.. Reason: missing ending code tag
# 4  
Old 12-04-2009
Thanks!

It seems that I if I echo it to the screen it works, but when I save it in a file (>> inserts), it splits the lines by spaces.

Does this happen to you too?
# 5  
Old 12-04-2009
Hm no. Did you change IFS maybe? Does this also happen in a fresh shell with the mini script I posted before? Ie. add >> to somefile in the line with echo.
# 6  
Old 12-04-2009
Thanks again!

Sorry, silly me! The first time I run the script, I did it with a for loop (giving me the bad result) and after I changed the script, I forgot to remove the inserts.sql file, so the correct solution was being appended to the file and I never saw it.

Cheers.
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