Shell Programming and Scripting

I am new to scripting

I want to parse a string in a loop
eg A:B:C
E:F:G:H
and put them in different variable
attr1 = A
attr2 = B
attr3 = C
attr4 = D
.
.
/* do processing with attr1, attr2, attr3 and attr4 */

then go to next line E:F:G:H and again assign attr1/attr2/attr3/attr4 with E,F,G and H

Strings I am reding from file line by line. In a line, string can be of any size
for example
A:B:C
E:F:G:H
I:J:K:L:M:N

Could you please guide how should be my bash shell script

I think you need something like this:

Code:

#! /bin/ksh
while read line; do
attr1=`echo $line | cut -d: -f1`
attr2=`echo $line | cut -d: -f2`
attr3=`echo $line | cut -d: -f3`
attr4=`echo $line | cut -d: -f4`
echo $attr1 $attr2 $attr3 $attr4
done < inputfile

It seems you have assumed all lines have 4 words seperated by :
but there may be less than 4 or more than 4.

Then how to traverse in particular line till new line character.

Your help will be greatly appreciated

Try this:

Code:

#! /bin/ksh

while read line; do
count=`echo $line | awk -F: '{print NF}'`
i=1
        while ((i <= $count));
        do
                attr${i}=`echo $line | cut -d: -f${i}`
                (( i = i + 1));
        done
done < inputfile

While executing following program it is giving follwong error

./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr1=fdxE1ConfigAdminStatus: command not found
./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr2=i: command not found
./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr3=1: command not found
./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr4=2: command not found

./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr1=fdxE1LineType: command not found
./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr2=i: command not found
./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr3=1: command not found
./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr4=2: command not found
./s-g-table.sh: line 8: attr5=3: command not found

The first and second line of file are as follows
fdxE1ConfigAdminStatus:i:1:2
fdxE1LineType:i:1:2:3

1 #! /bin/ksh
2
3 while read line; do
4 count=`echo $line | awk -F: '{print NF}'`
5 i=1
6 while ((i <= $count));
7 do
8 attr${i}=`echo $line | cut -d: -f${i}`
10 (( i = i + 1));
11 done
12done < inputfile

Could you help me to find out where is the problem

Thanks in advance

Code:

awk -F: '{ for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){ a[i]=$i; } }' input_file_name

The array values can be referred after the for loop. Any processing could be done here.

Raj's solution is simple, try that. About ksh code, I don't get any error, If you dont want to use awk then post here which shell you are using and at which platform you are, I guess you are at Linux, maybe some shell experts here could help you better about the error.