Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi There,

I am a beginner when it comes to writing scripts in LINUX so please bear with me when it comes to the question as it is probably a very simple issue.

I am just using some free time to write some LINUX scripts and have just worked ona very basic program that allows a user to input their name and then enter their top ten films. The user input is then written to a file using the following command :

echo "$input1,$input2.....etc" >> filename

In the output file the data is stored as below

input1,input2,etc

I am trying to find the right code to be able to assign the data from the output file to indiviual variables when reading from the output file. As there are liking to be spaces seperating word in the film title the only thing that is unique to seperate each instance is the ,

Is there some coding that I can use to complete this operation??

Sorry if the wording is not completely friendly but like I said I'm a beginner here so trying to do my best lol

RedAlex76

To be honest, this sounds suspiciously like homework (which isn't allowed in this forum and for which there is a special place).

I will give you a pointer, but then close this thread because of this suspicion - sorry if i'm wrong, but we had a lot of students being dishonest about their homework.

To split a string at a delimiter into pieces you can use "cut". See "man cut" for details.

For instance: lets split "a bc de fgh" by the delimiter "space":

Code:

# echo "a bc de fgh" | cut -d' ' -f1   # will yield "a"
# echo "a bc de fgh" | cut -d' ' -f2   # will yield "bc"
# echo "a bc de fgh" | cut -d' ' -f3   # will yield "de"
# echo "a bc de fgh" | cut -d' ' -f4   # will yield "fgh"

You can assign the output of a command to a variable using:

Code:

variable=$(somecommand)

If you wrap double quotes around it it will even protect whitespace:

Code:

variable="$(somecommand)"

This should enable you to finish the script. I hope this helps.

-closed-

bakunin