UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers

I have created a script that prompts the user to enter three variables that are seperated by a space as the delimiter.

It then performs a command 3 seperate times for each variable entered.

I want the script to llow the user to enter as many variables as they may like and the script to perform the commandwith each variable entered, each time.

the scripts promt starts as
example of script:

read AP1 AP2 AP3

{command + $AP1}
{Command + $AP2}
{Command + $AP3}


they are later used as $AP1 $AP2 $AP3

How can I change this with one read command that will use a loop to repeat the command to each variable entered?

Thank you for you help in advance.

italy87

use an array - note the "command" line will not work, it's an example:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh
echo "enter stuff \c"
read dummy
set -A array $dummy
let i=0

while [[ $i -lt ${#array[*]} ]]
do
     <command> ${arr[i]}
     let i=$i+1
done

Hello, I couldn't help wonder how I would do it in bash. This one lets the user enter all arguments first, one line at a time, then operates on the arguments.

It is more verbose than it should be, only to show usage of arrays... replace "echo "executing command"..." etc with Your actual command.

Code:

#!/bin/bash
echo Enter arguments, just press enter when finished.
cnt=0
while [ true ]; do 
	echo -n "Enter argument $(($cnt+1)): "
	read x[$cnt]
	[ "${x[$cnt]}" == "" ] && break
	cnt=$(($cnt+1))
done

echo Processing $cnt arguments

cnt=0
while (($cnt < ${#x[@]}-1 ))
 do
     echo "executing command on argument $(($cnt+1)) which is: ${x[cnt++]}"
 done

#echo ${x[@]}

/Lakris

OK, I should provide more info. first I am running in ksh.

I have a file with one line of a series of words that are three letters long, using s space as the delimiter.

I want to run a script which will retrieve those words and assign them to a variable, which i can run with my command in a loop until each word has been used, individually each time in the command until each three letter word has been used.

the file looks like this:

AIN OTB ALK SJA ALS HAH INA (etc..)

I want to run the command with all three letter word individually.

The commands i want to perform is already designed. I just need to insert the words in the command in a loop to do it each tmie. note the file may change with the count of words but it will always be three letter words. therefore it has to count the words each time it is run. i was thinking I would cat the file, pipe it to a wc -w and use that as the count for how many time to perform the loop. (I.e. wordct="cat <filename> | wc -w") with this variable I have a defined count of how many words each time.

I hope this helps.

reading them as one variable and the segregating will help

any suggestions on how to do that?