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I am new to shell programming and have an assignment question which requires me to list the contents of the present working directory in 4 column format and highlight any subdirectories. It then requires me to develop the shell script to accept a directory name as a positional parameter (if no parameter use the Present Working Directory); then adapt it to accept more than one directory as positional parameters; and finally adapt it to display the name of the sub directory and ask whether to descend and list the contents, list the contents without changing the Present working directory, or ignore the directory.

I am struggling to write a shell script which performs this task. I found the following script in a forum which i think was written for old version shell (SH). I have tried to reuse this shell and adapt it to the Bash shell. If anyone is able to help me either adapt the below code or have any suggestions on how i can go about this question. Please help. Major thanks in anticipation.

#!/bin/sh

if [ -n "$1" ]
then
WORKDIR=$1
else
WORKDIR=`pwd`
fi

WORKDIR=`echo $WORKDIR | awk \
'{
if (substr($0,length($0),1)=="/")
{
print substr($0,1,length($0)-1)
} else {
print $0
}
}'`

echo $WORKDIR

for DIR in `ls -l $WORKDIR | grep "^d" | awk '{ print $NF }'`
do
echo "Found directory $DIR, Decend, List, Ignore (D,L,I) ?"
read DLI
DLI=`echo $DLI | tr "dli" "DLI"`
case $DLI in
"D" ) $0 $WORKDIR/$DIR;;
"L" ) ls -l $WORKDIR/$DIR | grep -v "^d" | awk -v COUNTER=0 \
'{
printf "%s ",$NF
COUNTER++
if (COUNTER>=5)
{
printf "\n"
COUNTER=0
}
}' | column -t;;
"I" ) echo "Ignored directory $DIR";;
esac
done

ls -l $WORKDIR | grep -v "^d" | awk -v COUNTER=0 \
'{
printf "%s ",$NF
COUNTER++
if (COUNTER>=5)
{
printf "\n"
COUNTER=0
}
}' | column -t

regards Clinton

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