Shell Programming and Scripting

ok, so what i want to do is make a script that will do the following:

take out from a command in the terminal
put that output into a text file already on my computer.

the only thing is that i need to put the output in the file kinda weird: i need to take it and put each character of output on a new line, but not create new lines

example:

take output of command 'uptime' (up 32 days, 23:09)
place in file 'myFile'

output:
...
key u
key p
key space
key 3
key 2
key space
key d
...

anyone have any idea on how to do this?

thanks in advance

What are you working on?
What have you attempted so far and and where do you get stuck?

Regards

try something like this:

#!/bin/bash

output=$(uptime)
length=${#output}

for ((i=1; i<=length; i++))
do
character=$(echo $output | cut -c$i)
case "$character" in
[[:space:]]) echo "key: space";;
*) echo "key: $character";;
esac
done

thank you both for replies! i am very new to shell scripts, but not to programming. but i am still having trouble understanding some things about shell programming.

i will try the script that you made. thanks again

okay, i ran this script and it creates exactly what i was looking for. the only thing now is that i want to take that output, and put it in a file that already exists. the file has a bunch of "key Down Arrow" and so on in it on each line.

i want to get to where there is a "key n" where n = any number, 0-9. and overwrite the lines from with the output, and then leave the rest of the file alone.

okay. i am knew to scripting, and am trying to follow this.

what i see is that there is a variable called 'output' that holds the output of the 'uptime' command

i am guessing that the variable 'length' is the length (how many characters) of the variable 'output'.

there is a for loop that goes thru each character

there is another variable called 'character' that takes each letter of 'output'

then it prints "key: " and character to the screen.

my question is how can i put this in a file?

also, i see "*)" on the 3rd to last line. what does that do?

well, i've been messing around with the code, and this is what i have so far:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

output=$(uptime)
length=${#output}

cat tim | while read LINE
do
if [LINE == "key 0"]; then
for ((i=1; i<=length; i++))
do
character=$(echo $output | cut -c$i)
case "$character" in
[[:space:]]) echo "key <space>" >> tim;;
*) echo "key $character" >> tim;;
esac
done

fi
done

the filename is 'tim'. i get an error on line 8 of this code though.