Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi. I am just getting into scripting. I came into a situation where I need to go through several hundred files on a Linux system and find a couple specific bits of information from within each file. All the files have pretty much identical content except for a view data values on the same two lines in each file. I want to make a script that can go through them all and get each data value so I can manipulate them.

I know this is kind of a broad question, but I am really just trying to figure out where to get started. I am a bit of a Linux and programming novice, so I think this is going to be something difficult. Now I am reading about bash scripting from several different websites, but it seems like I might have to go through a lot of stuff and study for a few weeks before I can even accomplish something. I need to get this done much sooner than that.

Can anyone refer me to a good script site where I can dissect already made similar scripts or maybe a page that talks about file reading and manipulation scripts?

Any other kind of help is appreciated...

EDIT: I mean, what kind of commands would be wise to put in this script? Find? AWK?

Code:

find /directory/to/files -type f -name 'somename*.log' |\
while read file 
   grep -e 'pattern1' -e 'pattern2' -e 'pattern3' $file
done > outputfile

If you give us the things you are searching for we can help you create the search patterns.

from the "Gosh, you STILL learn things every day" department,

I never realised that you can have more than one search expression for grep, I'm sure I should have done, and should now feel stupid, but thank you anyway for today's lightbulb.

hey Jim thanks!

The file has a bunch of text and numbers but I just need to gather a number that is on like the 20th line of the file but the number is also after some text like this:

text file:
text
text
text
text
total numbers of something: 250900
total numbers of another thing: 750325
text
text
text

How do I get my script to go to those numbers? i will likely be putting them into a variable for computation and then so on for each file in the folder until they have all been gone through.

im still having trouble... im trying to learn how to use the sed command