Shell Programming and Scripting

This is my senario.....

The user enters a userid into linux.
((I have have already scripted the command to read this userid.))

I need help in writing the script so It reads the userID and in conjuction w/ the finger command displays to the user "no plan" on the screen (so the user reads/sees "no plan"). I hope I am explaining this good enough. Im a beginner. Please help!

Thanks
Aaron

Are you doing this remotely or locally? If locally, why use finger? All it is doing is outputing the contents of the users $HOME/.plan file. Please explain what you are actually trying to do - why the contents of plan? - Nice to see someone else from Richmond here.

Cheers,

Keith

Im currently in my first Unix class. The teacher wants us to write out a script using the unix info. we have learned so far. Im a beginner, so I will explain this the best way I can, please bear w/ me....thanks for your time :-)
I am doing this locally looking on a local college server.

This is the Script I am have trouble writing.

After the user enters in his/her userid, I need to look in that users $Home/.plan file and have just the words "no plan"
appear on the screen. It should be a simple one line script to do this, but I have no clue....I hope this explianation helps....

Thanks so much!
Aaron

In the future, be sure to read the rules that go along with the forums. Homework questions are not supposed to be posted to the forums. For this instance if you are having that happen at the time of the user's login, you could actually just add the following to the user's profile:

if [ -f $HOME/.plan ]
then
cat $HOME/.plan
else
echo "no plan"
fi

Cheers,

Keith

I did not realize the homework question thing...sorry.
Thank you very much for your time. I will try that script when I get home tonight.

Thanks for all your help!!

Aaron