Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi guys,

I need help:
I started receiving automatic emails containing download information. The problem is that these emails are coming in a rich format (I have no control of this) so the important information is buried under a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. To complicated things even further I need to automated the download process too so I need to somehow identify and extract the exact path to the file and forward it for further processing

the relevant part of the email looks something like this:

more_blah_before
style=3D"font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; =
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: =
0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Software</td><td =
style=3D"font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; =
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: =
0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a =
href=3D"afp://server.company.com/del/e/QQ888-9999/Q=
Q888-9999-3/QQ888-9999-3.dmg">del/QQ888-9999/QQ888-9999-3</a></td=
></tr><tr style=3D"vertical-align: top; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: =
0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; =
padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><td =
style=3D"font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; =
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: =
more_blah_after

so the part that I need to extract from here is
afp://server.company.com/del/e/QQ888-9999/QQ888-9999-3/QQ888-999-3.dmg

the problem is that the path to the file is split with "=" so that would have to be removed somehow (if present)

also I am not sure how to remove anything present before afp:// (like href=3D" in this case) or anything present after .dmg (
">del/QQ888-9999/QQ888-9999-3</a></td= in this case)

any help would be appreciated

thank you

This should do the job:

Code:

tr -d '\n' < file | sed 's/^.*"afp/"afp/;s/>.*$//'

wow. you're amazing. thank you!

to expand on this, most of the time I would get an email with not one, but two files to download (and two to avoid).
would you mind suggesting a loop that would extract both afp links

for example:
afps to get:

afp://MYserver.company.com/del/e/QQ888-9999/QQ888-9999-/QQ888-9999-3.dmg
and
afp://MYserver.company.com/del/e/QQ666-7777/QQ666-7777-/QQ666-7777-3.dmg

both buried in the rich formatting non-sense.

to makes things a bit more complicated, the email would also contain a couple of afp links to a different server, that I would need to be skipped

for example

afps to be skipped:
afp://NOTMYserver.company.com/del/e/QQ888-9999/QQ888-9999-/QQ888-9999-3.dmg
and
afp://NOTMYserver.company.com/del/e/QQ666-7777/QQ666-7777-/QQ666-7777-3.dmg


the sample email would look something like this:

more_blah_before
0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Software</td><td =
style=3D"font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; =
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: =
0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a =
href=3D"afp://NOTMYserver.company.com/del/e/QQ888-9999/Q=
Q888-9999-3/QQ888-9999-3.dmg">del/QQ888-9999/QQ888-9999-3</a></td=
></tr><tr style=3D"vertical-align: top; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: =
padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><td =
href=3D"afp://NOTmyserver.company.com/del/e/QQ666-7777/Q=
Q666-7777-3/QQ666-7777-3.dmg">del/QQ666-7777/QQ666-7777-3</a></td=
style=3D"font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; =
0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Software</td><td =
style=3D"font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; =
margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: =
0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a =
href=3D"afp://MYserver.company.com/del/e/QQ888-9999/Q=
Q888-9999-3/QQ888-9999-3.dmg">del/QQ888-9999/QQ888-9999-3</a></td=
></tr><tr style=3D"vertical-align: top; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: =
padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><td =
href=3D"afp://MYserver.company.com/del/e/QQ666-7777/Q=
Q666-7777-3/QQ666-7777-3.dmg">del/QQ666-7777/QQ666-7777-3</a></td=
style=3D"font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; =
more_blah_after

thanks again, much appreciated

The grep command should be able to select the records you want to include. Using grep -v allows you to exclude records that match a criteria.

So, you might want to append

grep "afp://MYserver.company.com"
or
grep -v "afp://NOTMYserver.company.com"

to the end of the previous command string.

.. or replace sed by awk:

Code:

tr -d '\n' < file | awk -F'"' -v v="MYserver" '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){if(match($i,"/"v)) print $i}}'

again, unbelievable. thank you guys, what would take me days (if not weeks) to figure out is sometimes just a couple of posts away. anyway this will be a great starting point for me to learn something new and useful.

thanks again.

almost there:

I am now able to get the desired paths, and do further string replacements which is great.

my outputs ends up being something like this:

output="file1path file2path"

I'd like to further process this and have the two paths in two separate variables:

file1="file1path"
file2="file2path"

what's the best approach here ? I don't think I need an array, just two simple variables.

thanks again for any hints