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Full Discussion: Dealing with white spaces in bash scripts
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Dealing with white spaces in bash scripts Post 302781471 by venmx on Saturday 16th of March 2013 04:26:35 PM
Old 03-16-2013
Dealing with white spaces in bash scripts
I'm trying to search for all files in directory with particular GID then change the GID to match the UID of each file:

Code:
#!/bin/sh

for i in $(find /dump -gid 200 | sed 's/\ /\\\ /g' | sed 's/\&/\\\&/g'); do
  chgrp $(ls -ln ${i} | awk '{print $3}') ${i}
done

I'm using sed to deal with spaces and special characters.

I get a clean output from the find command when run on its own; I also get the desired result when I run chgrp and substitute a line from output of find into each instance of variable ${i}.

But when I run the script, I get many errors and not all the files/directories have been chgrp as desired.

Here's an excerpt of the errors I'm seeing:

Code:
chgrp: missing operand after `/dump/aaa36/.evolution/memos/config'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.
chgrp: missing operand after `/dump/aaa36/.evolution/calendar/config'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.
chgrp: missing operand after `/dump/aaa36/.evolution/tasks/config'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.
chgrp: missing operand after `/dump/aaa36/.evolution/cache'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.
ls: cannot access /dump/aaa36/untitled\: No such file or directory
chgrp: missing operand after `/dump/aaa36/untitled\\'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.
ls: cannot access folder: No such file or directory
chgrp: missing operand after `folder'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.
ls: cannot access /dump/aaa36/untitled\: No such file or directory
chgrp: missing operand after `/dump/aaa36/untitled\\'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.
ls: cannot access folder/neutron_EDM.pdf: No such file or directory
chgrp: missing operand after `folder/neutron_EDM.pdf'
Try `chgrp --help' for more information.

Please tell me what I'm doing wrong?! Thanks :-)

---------- Post updated at 08:26 PM ---------- Previous update was at 07:56 PM ----------

OK, solved my own problem...

It's because for loops process space as field separators. I found a neat way to get around this:

Code:
#!/bin/sh

SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

for i in $(find /dump -gid 200 | sed 's/\s\+/\\ /g' | sed 's/\&\+/\\\&/g'); do
  chgrp $(ls -ln ${i} | awk '{print $3}') ${i}

done

IFS=$SAVEIFS

Thanks to: nixCraft (BASH Shell: For Loop File Names With Spaces)
 

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LEARN ABOUT SUNOS

chgrp

chgrp(1)							   User Commands							  chgrp(1)

NAME

       chgrp - change file group ownership

SYNOPSIS

       chgrp [-fhR] group file...

       chgrp -R [f] [-H | -L | -P]  group file...

DESCRIPTION

       The chgrp utility will set the group ID of the file named by each file operand to the group ID specified by the group operand.

       For each file operand, it will perform actions equivalent to the  chown(2) function, called with the following arguments:

	 o  The file operand will be used as the path argument.

	 o  The user ID of the file will be used as the owner argument.

	 o  The specified group ID will be used as the group argument.

       Unless  chgrp  is invoked by a process with appropriate privileges, the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits of a regular file will be cleared
       upon successful completion; the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits of other file types may be cleared.

       The operating system has a configuration option _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED, to restrict ownership changes. When this option is in effect,  the
       owner  of  the file may change the group of the file only to a group to which the owner belongs. Only the super-user can arbitrarily change
       owner IDs, whether or not this option is in effect. To set this configuration option, include the following line in /etc/system:

       set rstchown = 1

       To disable this option, include the following line in /etc/system:

       set rstchown = 0

       _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED is enabled by default. See system(4) and fpathconf(2).

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported.

   /usr/bin/chgrp and /usr/xpg4/bin/chgrp
       -f	Force. Does not report errors.

       -h	If the file is a symbolic link, this option changes the group of the symbolic link. Without this option, the  group  of  the  file
		referenced by the symbolic link is changed.

       -H	If  the  file specified on the command line is a symbolic link referencing a file of type directory, this option changes the group
		of the directory referenced by the symbolic link and all the files in the file hierarchy below it. If a symbolic link  is  encoun-
		tered when traversing a file hierarchy, the group of the target file is changed, but no recursion takes place.

       -L	If  the  file is a symbolic link, this option changes the group of the file referenced by the symbolic link. If the file specified
		on the command line, or encountered during the traversal of the file hierarchy, is a symbolic link  referencing  a  file  of  type
		directory, then this option changes the group of the directory referenced by the symbolic link and all files in the file hierarchy
		below it.

       -P	If the file specified on the command line or encountered during the traversal of a file hierarchy is a symbolic link, this  option
		changes the group of the symbolic link. This option does not follow the symbolic link to any other part of the file hierarchy.

       Specifying  more  than one of the mutually-exclusive options -H, -L, or -P is not considered an error. The last option specified determines
       the behavior of chgrp.

   /usr/bin/chgrp
       -R	Recursive. chgrp descends through the directory, and any subdirectories, setting the specified group ID as  it	proceeds.  When  a
		symbolic link is encountered, the group of the target file is changed, unless the -h or -P option is specified. However, no recur-
		sion takes place, unless the -H or -L option is specified.

   /usr/xpg4/bin/chgrp
       -R	Recursive. chgrp descends through the directory, and any subdirectories, setting the specified group ID as  it	proceeds.  When  a
		symbolic link is encountered, the group of the target file is changed, unless the -h or -P option is specified. Unless the -H, -L,
		or -P option is specified, the -L option is used as the default mode.

OPERANDS

       The following operands are supported:

       group	A group name from the group database or a numeric group ID. Either specifies a group ID to be given to each file named by  one	of
		the  file  operands.  If a numeric group operand exists in the group database as a group name, the group ID number associated with
		that group name is used as the group ID.

       file	A path name of a file whose group ID is to be modified.

USAGE

       See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of chgrp when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte (2**31 bytes).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of chgrp: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE,  LC_MES-
       SAGES, and NLSPATH.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values are returned:

       0	The utility executed successfully and all requested changes were made.

       >0	An error occurred.

FILES

       /etc/group      group file

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

   /usr/bin/chgrp
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWcsu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |CSI			     |Enabled (see NOTES)	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Standard			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

   /usr/xpg4/bin/chgrp
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWxcu4			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |CSI			     |Enabled (see NOTES)	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Standard			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       chmod(1), chown(1), id(1M), chown(2), fpathconf(2), group(4), passwd(4), system(4), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5)

NOTES

       chgrp is CSI-enabled except for the group name.

SunOS 5.10							    25 Nov 2003 							  chgrp(1)
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