UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Alright, I'm sure there's a more efficient way to do this... I'm not an expert by any means. What I'm trying to do is search a file for lines that match the two input words (first name, last name) in order to remove that line. The removal part is what I'm struggling with. Here is my code:

Code:

echo 'Please input first name: \c'
read searchFirst
echo 'Please input last name: \c'
read searchLast

egrep -in "$searchLast" contacts.txt | egrep -i "$searchFirst" | awk -f: 'NR > 0 && NR < $NR { print $1 }'

I successfully get the line number that awk prints, but I can't figure out how I can pipe that to a sed in order to delete it. I've tried to delete it using the $1 variable from the awk, but I don't think it's possible to access that variable outside of the awk. Is there a way to incorporate the sed directly into the awk? Thanks.

Yeah, I overcomplicated it.

Code:

egrep -iv "$searchFirst":"$searchLast" contacts.txt > contacts.txt

Did the trick.

Alright, nevermind. When I do contacts.txt > contacts.txt it erases my contacts file. If I do

Code:

egrep -iv "$searchFirst":"$searchLast" contacts.txt | tee contacts.txt

It works, but I don't want the entries that don't match to be printed on screen. Any suggestions?

Nevermind.

Code:

egrep -iv "$searchFirst":"$searchLast" contacts.txt > tempFile
mv tempFile contacts.txt

There's not a cleaner way of doing that, is there?

It is always good to be smart enough to answer your own questions

I do not know of a way to get egrep to overwrite the original file. If you use Perl it has a command line function that will create a backup of your original and then update the original. Although, I do not see much of an advantage over just using ';' semi-colon so you can execute both of your commands on the same line.