Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi, I cannot get this to work at all. I want to match the telephone to the fileb.dat I think it is the IFS but not clear on this. Please see two files going in

filea.dat

Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7577
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7779
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 677 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 717 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7778
Mr John Smith
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7877
Mr John Smith 0151 777 7777

fileb.dat

0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777
0151 777 7777

This is the script:

count=0
IFS="
"
while read title forename surname telephone
do

file1=`cat ../data/fileb.dat | cut -c1-13`

if [ "$telephone" = "$file1" ]
then
count=`expr $count + 1`
echo "There are $count record/s matched"

fi

done < ../data/filea.dat
IFS=$OFS

echo "The total count that matches is $count"

*********************Can someone tell me why the loop is not working and how to get it working. It is something obvious but not to me.

I see no error brwosing it, but maybe you just show us what error you get.

On the other hand since every line in fileb.dat is always the same pattern, you can just do:

Code:

grep -c "0151 777 7777" filea.dat

If you still insist on checking the files against each other, you can play around with

Code:

grep -cf fileb.dat filea.dat

There was a problem with the file coming in, when i dos2unix the file it worked.

Thanks for your other suggestions Zaxxon