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Shell Programming and Scripting

open a file in vi

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# 1  
Old 03-15-2011
open a file in vi
I am prompting a user to enter a file to open in vi and if the file exists and is a readable ordinary file, otherwise create that file. Also protect that so the user can not open in vi a binary file or a directory.
could i use the command file to find out if the file is ordinary text file combined with the grep command ? not sure how to do this

Code:
echo "please enter a file to edit in vi"
read file
vi $file

# 2  
Old 03-15-2011
One common pragma is just append nothing to the given file name, so now it exists empty or is unchanged. You get an error if it is not writable, so there are the shell tests 'if [ -f "$file" ]' and more code.
Code:
>> "$file"

# 3  
Old 03-15-2011
I tried this but i keep getting "please enter a real file extension"
how would i then create a valid file?

Code:
if [ -f " $file"  ]
then
echo "A real file"

vi $file
else
echo "please enter a real file extension"
fi

how could i use grep to find the file to see if it exists?
Last edited by icelated; 03-15-2011 at 03:58 PM..
# 4  
Old 03-15-2011
Code:
if [ -f " $file"  ]

remove space after the first doublequote:
Code:
if [ -f "$file"  ]

in your script :
instead of :
Code:
vi $file

use:
Code:
touch $file

# 5  
Old 03-15-2011
Yes, 'touch "$file"' is very like '>> "$file" but does not fork or exec. Keep $file in "" in case they type in something white space or worse!
# 6  
Old 03-15-2011
how do i find out if the file is a valid file? i dont want to open binary file or a directory.
# 7  
Old 03-15-2011
or ... inspired from the way Dave Korn recommand to ceate lock files (but here atomicity has not been specified as a requirement so the noclobber option is not mandatory)

Code:
: > $file 2>/dev/null

Smilie
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