Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi! I'm somewhat new to Unix (I use it to fiddle, but not seriously), and at my work I have come to use it quite a bit. My question is this:

I want to create a script to take the tedium out of repetitious tasks. However, I need to pass a file name into the script in order for it to work.

How would I do that?

Thanks

First, welcome. Please read the rules (Just in case your evil twin is making you ask the question {see home page })

What scripting language are you using, OS and version? Normally, you can pass a variable (filename or other info) in parameters 1 through 8.

example:
$ cat junk
#!/bin/ksh
echo $1
$
$ ./junk newstuff
newstuff
$

I'm running Windows 2000. I'm using an X11 interface called Exceed, and the editor I'm using is the Exceed editor called TextEdit. My shell is the K shell (ksh).

What do you mean by what language? Isn't a Unix script just a set of Unix commands that get executed by the computer rather than me typing them in? The language I'm using is Unix... :\

What I would like to do is something aking to this: (my script is called cdrmln, based on the commands it uses)

$ ./cdrmln{get_profile.cgi}

and then have the code inside cdrmln do stuff based on the name "get_profile.cgi".

Actually, the thing with $1 just solved my problem.

Thank you very much

You can build a script with different 'languages' (maybe I should have quoted it in the first place). You would actually be using a shell - in your case ksh. You could have been using sh, csh, bash, ... or something like Tcl, Perl. If you don't specify, then we have less information then we need to assist. UNIX is not a language.

Since you are using Exceed, are you connecting to a UNIX based system? If so, then what is that system OS and version (can be found with the uname command {options can be found in the man page - $ man uname }).

If you are using ksh, then the parameters given earlier should work.

Yes, I'm connecting to a server called "flagfish", which runs SunOS 5.8.

The script now works great (using the $1 thingy), but I'm having a bit o' trouble with rm -f, but that should be a quick fix.