Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,
This with reference to my earlier thread.

I have file called input that has 2 values. Now I have to check whether the 2 fileds are seperated by a "|" or not. I am not able to do this with the following script.

while read line
do
first=`echo $line | cut -f1 -d'|'`
second=`echo $line | cut -f2 -d'|'`
echo $first $second
if [ "$first" = "" -o "$second" = "" ]
then
print "\nERROR: Line \#$cnt \"$line\" is missing a | field.\n"
print "\n The fields in the input file must be seperated by |"
exit 1
fi
done < input

This script is not working. Please help me out.
Thanks in advance

Code:

if [ $(echo $line|grep -c '|') -ne 1 ]
then
   print "\nERROR: Line \#$cnt \"$line\" is missing a | field.\n"
   print "\n The fields in the input file must be seperated by |"
   exit 1
fi

Hi,
Thanks. It worked. How can I do it if my input file has 4 fields and they are seperated by "|". Will the same logic work. I tried it. It didnt work.

Thanks in advance

did you change the condition,

to hold no of "|" delimiters

assuming 3 "|" for separating 4 fields

if [ $(echo $line|grep -c '|') -ne 3 ]

Other way:

Code:

if [ $(echo "$line"|grep -c "^.\{1,\}|.\{1,\}|.\{1,\}$" ) -ne 1 ]
then
.....

Note that in \{1,\} ,1 is the min length of the param in that postion.
Cheers

Hi,
The real problem is that the user may give 3 fields or 4 fields in the input file. I shoud perform a check based on that. Thats where I am stuck. Since the number of fields may vary(3 or 4). How can i place a check for that.


Thanks in advance

Code:

awk -F\| '{if ( NF != 3  &&  NF != 4 ){print "Bad param number"}else{for (i=1;i<=NF;i++){print "Param"i": "$i}}}'<input