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Full Discussion: Problem with a text file
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Problem with a text file Post 302913381 by Don Cragun on Friday 15th of August 2014 09:35:18 PM
Old 08-15-2014
What you have does not fit the definition of a text file. A non-empty text file's last character is (by definition) a <newline> character. It is also strange that your shell prompt appeared at the start of the next line after the cat; for common settings of PS1, the prompt should have appeared immediately after the Qc7 1-0 at the end of the last line of output instead of being on the next line.

If you know that you have a file that is missing the terminating <newline> character an easy way to fix it is:
Code:
echo >> file

If you have files where you don't know if the file has its terminating <newline> or not, and only want to add a <newline> to files that do not have the required terminator, you could try something like:
Code:
#!/bin/ksh
f="samp.pgn"
if [ -f "$f" ] && [ -s "$f" ]
then	# file is a regular file with size greater than 0
	(	IFS=""; read -r last <<-EOF
			$(tail -c1 "$f")
		EOF
		# If the last character in the file is a <newline>, $last will
		# expand to an empty string.  Add a <newline> if one was not
		# present.
		[ "$last" != "" ] &&  echo >> "$f"
	)
fi

Note that this will not modify a file if it is not a regular file, is a regular file of size 0, and will not create a file if it doesn't exist.
This User Gave Thanks to Don Cragun For This Post:
prvnrk
 

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LEARN ABOUT REDHAT

postlog

POSTLOG(1)						      General Commands Manual							POSTLOG(1)

NAME

       postlog - Postfix-compatible logging utility

SYNOPSIS

       postlog [-iv] [-c config_dir] [-p priority] [-t tag] [text...]

DESCRIPTION

       The postlog command implements a Postfix-compatible logging interface for use in, for example, shell scripts.

       By  default, postlog logs the text given on the command line as one record. If no text is specified on the command line, postlog reads from
       standard input and logs each input line as one record.

       Logging is sent to syslogd(8); when the standard error stream is connected to a terminal, logging is sent there as well.

       The following options are implemented:

       -c config_dir
	      Read the main.cf configuration file in the named directory instead of the default configuration directory.

       -i     Include the process ID in the logging tag.

       -p priority
	      Specifies the logging severity: info (default), warn, error, fatal, or panic.

       -t tag Specifies the logging tag, that is, the identifying name that appears at the beginning of each logging record.

       -v     Enable verbose logging for debugging purposes. Multiple -v options make the software increasingly verbose.

SEE ALSO

       syslogd(8) syslog daemon.

LICENSE

       The Secure Mailer license must be distributed with this software.

AUTHOR(S)
       Wietse Venema
       IBM T.J. Watson Research
       P.O. Box 704
       Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA

																	POSTLOG(1)
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