Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a strange problem that i really cant figure out!

i have several commands bunched together on a single line.

Is there a way i can put them on their own individual lines?

I have:

Code:

ls -l pwd cat /etc/passwd find . -name myfile.txt

Is there a sed or awk command that i can use to have it look like this:

Code:

ls -l
pwd
cat /etc/passwd
find . -name myfile.txt

...

can't you just edit the script/file and put them on their own lines?

see, im reading from a file, and these commands appear all bunched up. Theres no way i can read them seperately if their not on their own individual lines.

no, there is no way to do this, at least not in a reliable way. The reason is, that what comprises a command could well be a an argument either. For example, consider the following line:

"cat a mv b c"

That could be two commands, "cat a " and "mv b c", but it could it could also be a single "cat" command with 4 arguments, a, mv, b, c - there is no law against a file called "mv".

So, without any additional information (like "commands can have no arguments" or something such) you are left to guesses and every script, however refined, will go wrong sooner or later.

I hope that helps.

bakunin