Shell Programming and Scripting

We have a file containing names that we have to look up from time to time. The relevant part of the record looks like:

Code:

123@"DOE, John"@"indiv

The first and last names are positional parameters and so far my script looks like:

Code:

grep -i $2, myfilename |grep -i "', $1'" |more;

The first part of the script is OK, but I haven't found a way to put a leading space or ", " in front of the 2nd search expression that works. I've tested the 2nd part with

Code:

echo "', $1'"

, but that doesn't work in the last grep command.

Any ideas? TIA

What do you need the single quotes for? Did you try without?

Thank you, that worked!

Wouldn't

Code:

grep -i "$2, $1" file

work as well?

It didn't fly. Replaced grep with echo. The name was formatted but not enclosed in quotes. Tried different combinations of single or double quotes on the outside, but nothing happened.

Thanks for looking, though.

RudiC's solution works OK for me here:

Code:

$ cat name.find
grep -i "$2, $1" name.list

$ cat name.list
123@"DOE, John"@"indiv

$ ./name.find john doe
123@"DOE, John"@"indiv

$./name.find jane plain

To keep from getting false positives (Chubler_XL and RudiC, try your suggestion with $1 set to OE and $2 set to Jo with your test dataset) by actually matching the double quotes in the file, one could try:

Code:

grep -i "\"$1, $2\"" myfilename

or, if you want a case sensitive match:

Code:

grep "\"$1, $2\"" myfilename