Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello All,

I have to write a shell logic inside my ANT Script , the data from my ANT is in the string like

string a = "test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4,props"

how do i remove this wild card characters from my string a and assign them to an other string , like i only want to remove * ? and put them to other string

string b = "*, ?"
and
string c = "test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4,props"

because i wanted to put a logic where if this string value is * or ? , I will write a logic to exist the build and give the failure to user.

Hi guy,
Could understood your string a to string b, may this could work.

Code:

$ a="test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4,props"
$ echo $a|awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){if($i~/[*?]/){$i=a[FR]++?","$i:$i;printf "%s",$i}}}' FS=','
*,?

But seems like that string c is same as string a. So what's the meaning of your "remove * ?"

Hello Raokl,

Not sure if this meets your requirement, could you please try the following.
This is to remove * and ?.

Code:

echo "test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4,props" | awk 'gsub(/\*/,X) gsub(/\?/,Y) 1'

Output will be as follows.

Code:

test1.props,test2.props,,test3.props,,test4,props

Thanks,
R. Singh

Hello Lucas,

Thank you very much for your reply

I am sorry for the typo error, the requirement should have to be

string a = "test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4,props"

so in this i need to remove the wildcard characters and assign them as the below

string b = "*,?"

string c = "test1.props,test2.props,test3.props,test4.props"

your commands works great , but is there any way that for example if i have below

string a = "test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4.props,*,test5.props,?"


then i need the loop to exit the moment it finds the first wildcard character , so in this case

string b="*"

string c="test1.props,test2.props,test3.props,test4.props,test5.props"

because based on the string b i will write a conditional statement in my ANT to display error to user if string b = "*" or string b= "?"

and continue my ANT operation on the string c

Sing- Thank you for your response but i am getting the below error

a ="test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4.props,*,test5.props,?"

Code:

echo $a| awk 'gsub(/\*/,X) gsub(/\,Y) 1'
awk: gsub(/\*/,X) gsub(/\,Y) 1
awk:                    ^ unterminated regexp
awk: cmd. line:1: gsub(/\*/,X) gsub(/\,Y) 1
awk: cmd. line:1:                          ^ unexpected newline or end of string

Hello Raokl,

Sorry my bad it should be as follows.

Code:

echo $a| awk 'gsub(/\*/,X) gsub(/\?/,X) 1'
 
cho "test1.props,test2.props,*,test3.props,?,test4,props" | awk 'gsub(/\*/,X) gsub(/\?/,Y) 1'

Thanks,
R. Singh

Let us modify recent code a little, then may it works as your purpose.

Code:

$ echo $a|awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){if($i~/[*?]/){printf "%s",$i;exit}}}' FS=','
*
$ echo $a|sed 's/\(,\{0,1\}\)[*?]\(,\{0,1\}\)/\1\2/g;s/,,/,/g'
test1.props,test2.props,test3.props,test4,props

Lucas- Thank you for the response , i am sorry for the delay in responding

your solution pefectly works

echo $a|awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){if($i~/[*?]/){printf "%s",$i;exit}}}' FS=','

but when i am using this in my ANT arguments it is throwing an error if we give operator < , XML is treating it as a closing tag and throwing parsing error , i tried my best to convernt it into CDATA but still it throws build error , Is there any other way/logic you would suggest me without using the '<' operator in i<=NF.