Hi,

OK, thanks for the detail. This would seem to imply that your Linux system doesn't have /bin/tempfile installed on it. It may be worth checking to see if it's in /usr/bin/tempfile instead, but failing that change the line to something like this:

tmp=/tmp/script.tmp

or any other filename that you are sure it is safe for you to use.

An alternative version of the script that purely checks for the presence of "BEGIN MESSAGE" or "END MESSAGE" anywhere on a line follows.

Note that this isn't strictly speaking 100% safe or reliable, since if for any reason any other line happened to contain either of these strings as part of its text this would trigger the checks in question, and cause that particular block (at a minimum) to get mangled.

It's always a good idea to absolutely strictly define strings like this if you can, since they are fundamental to how parsing a file can safely be done. But if the number of asterisks is variable then you may have to go with the less-strict version below.

Code:

#!/bin/bash

input=example.txt
tmp=`/bin/tempfile`

while read -r line
do
        if echo "$line" | /bin/grep "BEGIN MESSAGE" >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
        then
                echo "$line" > "$tmp"
        elif echo "$line" | /bin/grep "END MESSAGE" >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
        then
                echo "$line" >> "$tmp"

                if /bin/grep ^Original\ presentment\ Not\ Found\ \!$ "$tmp" >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
                then
                        /bin/cat "$tmp"
                        echo
                fi
        else
                echo "$line" >> "$tmp"
        fi
done < "$input"

---------- Post updated at 02:30 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:20 PM ----------

Hi,

One last version, this time avoiding the use of grep (which may make things run a little faster if you have a great deal of data to get through):

Code:

#!/bin/bash

input=example.txt
tmp=`/bin/tempfile`

while read -r line
do
        case "$line" in
                *BEGIN\ MESSAGE*)
                        echo "$line" > "$tmp"
                        ;;
                *END\ MESSAGE*)
                        echo "$line" >> "$tmp"

                        if /bin/grep ^Original\ presentment\ Not\ Found\ \!$ "$tmp" >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
                        then
                                /bin/cat "$tmp"
                                echo
                        fi
                        ;;
                *)
                        echo "$line" >> "$tmp"
                        ;;
        esac
done < "$input"

Again, the same caveats apply as outlined previously: if a line for any reason contains "BEGIN MESSAGE" or "END MESSAGE" as part of its own text and isn't itself a block marker, this would cause problems. So this is only safe if you're 100% sure that will never happen in your input.