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File Processing: Handling spaces in a line

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# 8  
Old 11-15-2013
Would this come close to what you want to achieve:
Code:
while IFS="=" read A B
  do case $A in
       "#"*) printf "comment" ;;
         "") printf "empty" ;;
          *) read $A < <(echo $B) ;;
     esac
  eval echo "\$A="\$$A
  done <file

? That eval echo is just for controlling purposes.
This User Gave Thanks to RudiC For This Post:
baanprog
# 9  
Old 11-15-2013
Can we see a sample input file and which ones you want to use and which to exclude?

Please past in CODE tags to make it easier to read.



Robin
# 10  
Old 11-15-2013
I have already posted sample input with which ones I want to see, please see my earlier post

I want to remove only empty lines and lines starting with #
Also line with the substring WHOA

where
Code:
WHOA= %s : %S - %C [%c xxxx]

I want to avoid
# 11  
Old 11-15-2013
Just include a line like WHOA) ;; above to eliminate that variable...
# 12  
Old 11-15-2013
Yes, I have seen that you were editing your post as I was writing mine. Oh well Smilie

So, if you want to exclude all blank lines, comments (actually starting with a #) and those starting "WHOA=", then you can have all this in one grep thus:-
Code:
egrep -v "^$|^#|^WHOA=" file > tmp/myenv.$$
. /tmp/myenv.$$
rm /tmp/myenv.$$



You have various suggestions now. Which one is closest to what you need? We can concentrate on that route.



Robin
This User Gave Thanks to rbatte1 For This Post:
baanprog
# 13  
Old 11-15-2013
I think I want to join if possible the below solution

Code:
while IFS="=" read VAR VALUE
do
        [ -z "$VAR" ] && continue # Ignore blank lines
        case "$VAR" in
        WHOA*)  ;;

        *)
                read $VAR <<EOF
$VALUE
EOF
                export $VAR
                ;;
        esac
done < $file

with yours
Code:
egrep -v "^$|^#|^WHOA=" file > tmp/myenv.$$
. /tmp/myenv.$$   -- This I dod not need as I only use these variables in another shell script to set the environment 
rm /tmp/myenv.$$

# 14  
Old 11-15-2013
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corona688
for x in `cat something` is basically always wrong because of the problem you have discovered among others. You could be doing a while read line ; do ... done < inputfile loop.

If your input file is of the form VAR=VALUE, you can do this:

Code:
while IFS="=" read VAR VALUE
do
        [ -z "$VAR" ] && continue # Ignore blank lines
        case "$VAR" in
        WHOA*)  ;;

        *)
                read $VAR <<EOF
$VALUE
EOF
                export $VAR
                ;;
        esac
done < $file

Which means that, if someone puts `rm -Rf ~/` in your configuration file, it will store that strong instead of running that string like eval would!
@Robin:
the here document is a trick to feed variables to read in a safe manner. The here document is pre-processed by the shell (and usually stored in a temp file) then opened as a stream. While processing the here document a `command` is executed and a $var is substituted, but not the contents of $var.
BTW the processing can be restricted by putting the EOF marker in quotes: <<"EOF" or <<'EOF', then the here document is treated as a quoted string.

I am not convinced that one cannot use the evil eval here.
Code:
while IFS="=" read VAR VALUE
do
  case "$VAR" in
    WHOA*)
    ;;
    [A-Z]*)
    eval $VAR='$VALUE'
    export $VAR
    ;;
  esac
done < $file

Last edited by MadeInGermany; 11-15-2013 at 02:08 PM..
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