Originally Posted by Don Cragun

We are not using different Linux distros. I am using a UNIX system where the output produced by the ipcs utility follows the formatting requirements specified by the standards.

If what you are trying to do is to remove message queues, shared memory segments, and semaphore sets that you own, the problem you stated in this thread seems to be useless. If you save the following script in $HOME/bin/cleanipc:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# Usage: ipcs [-mqs] | cleanipc
#
# This script reads output from the ipcs utility from standard input and uses
# ipcrm to remove all message queues, shared memory segments, and semaphore
# sets whose owner is "bob".
echo ipcrm $(awk -v user="bob" '
$2 == "Shared" {
    type = " -m "
    next
}
$2 == "Message" {
    type = " -q "
    next
}
$2 == "Semaphore" {
    type = " -s "
    next
}
/^0x/ && $3 == user {
    o = o type $2
}
END {    print o
}')

and make it executable using:

Code:

chmod +x $HOME/bin/cleanipc

then the command:

Code:

ipcs -ms | cleanipc

it will show you an ipcrm command that will remove all shared memory segments and semaphore sets owned by "bob". If that looks like what you want to do, remove the echo shown in red in the script to have the script actually remove those IPC facilities.

Use different (or no options) on the ipcs command to process just message queues (-q), just shared memory segments (-m), just semaphore sets (-s), or everything (no options).

Note that the above script will NOT work on any system where the output produced by ipcs conforms to the standards. If your ipcs produced standard format output, the following code in the above awk script:

Code:

$2 == "Shared" {
        type = " -m "
        next
}
$2 == "Message" {
        type = " -q "
        next
}
$2 == "Semaphore" {
        type = " -s "
        next
}
/^0x/ && $3 == user {
        o = o type $2
}

would be replaced by:

Code:

$1 ~ /^(m|q|s)$/ && $5 == user {
        o = o " -"$1 $2
}