Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi All,

I've got some strange behaviour going on when trying to manipulate a file that contains spaces.

My input file looks something like this:

xxxxxxxxx,yyyy,sss sss sss,bbbbbbb

If I use awk:

When running from the command line I get:

sss sss sss

But when running from a loop I get:

My loop looks like this:

Code:

for LINES in $( cat tgp.txt )
do  TITLE=$( echo "$LINES" | awk -F'~' '{ print $3 }' )
echo "$TITLE"
done

I get the same behaviour for cut commands like this:

Has some sort of system input/output field separator been changed? Or am I just doing something wrong?

Thanks, p.

Add following line

Code:

IFS=","

or

Code:

IFS=""

Here's some more testing to prove my point:

I am right in thinking this is not normal behaviour?

Sorry, must've posted my reply at the same time...

Where do I put this? in my shell script?

fpmurphy - you were right! Thanks

I just had to tweek it like this:

i.e. setting it to NULL.

I put this in my script before the cut's and it's doing the job!

Thanks again,

p.

Interestingly the next point in my script where a file had to be manipulated exhibited the same problem - this file only had one field but the script saw just one entry eventhough there are many lines... I found that adding:

fixed this problem... very weird.

seriously, for what you are doing in the above code, the "better" way is just to use awk. (or a while loop to iterate lines in files , with IFS set. )