Shell Programming and Scripting

What I am trying to do is write a script that makes some commands easier, now one of the commands is to rebuild mail boxes in plesk, which would would be something like

/usr/loca/psa/websrvmng --vhost-reconfigure --vhost-name=domain.com

but the domain.com bit is going to need to change with the users input.

I have built a menu and have the below code to request a y/n to delete the tmp directory:

Code:

         echo "Confirm deletion of /tmp/* directory contents? Y/N"
            read confirm

                if [ "$confirm" = y ]
                   then
                     rm -rf /tmp/*
                     echo "Deleted" ; echo Tmp Directory Contents Deleted "|" `date` "|" `whoami` >> /var/log/tom.log ; echo "$press"
                else
                   echo "Wimp!!!" ; echo "$press" ;
                   fi ; read ;;

What I want is something similar to the above to instead of asking for y/n to ask for the domain to rebuild and then to pass that into the command.

Code:

echo Enter Domain:
read domain
dig $domain |grep "ANSWER SECTION" >/dev/null 2>&1 &&  /usr/loca/psa/websrvmng --vhost-reconfigure --vhost-name=$domain

I threw the dig in as one way to validate user input (if the domain doesn't exist in dns the command will not run)

you are a legend, thanks.

could you explain this section for me please:

grep "ANSWER SECTION" >/dev/null 2>&1

i assume it is looking for the answer section in the dig, if it finds it its sending it to dev null and if thats correct it then issues the command?

Yes that is right. The dig will only have a line ANSWER SECTION if the domain exists, as found by this machine (however it resolves names). The grep is there as a test, we are not really interested in the output, just whether ANSWER SECTION is in the dig output. the >/dev/null redirects greps stdout to /dev/null (throwing it away) and the 2>&1 redirects the greps stderr to where stdout is currently pointing. grep will then return either 0 or 1 (found or not found). If 0(found), then the command after the && runs, if 1(not found) it does not.

If you wanted to run a script if the domain was not found add || and the command to run to the end of the line.

Code:

dig $domain | \
grep "ANSWER SECTION" >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
 /usr/loca/psa/websrvmng --vhost-reconfigure --vhost-name=$domain || \
 /some/other/command/to/indicate/failure

(the \ at the end of those lines are bash line continuation commands (also ksh I think, but not csh))