UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I am trying to query the database to get the list of portfolio and for each portfolio, I am using the for loop, but the problem is some of the portfolio is having the spaces.

The Code

PORT=`${EFG_ISQL} -b <<-!
set nocount on
use ${EFG_DB}
go
select portId from PORTFOLIO
go
!`

echo $PORT

for Portfolio in $PORT
do
........................
done

When the portfolio is having spaces, the for loop is run for each word.

I tried using the IFS and changed the code to

PORT=`${EFG_ISQL} -b <<-!
set nocount on
use ${EFG_DB}
go
select portId from PORTFOLIO
go
!`
echo $PORT

spaces=IFS
IFS="
"
for Portfolio in $PORT
do
echo $Portfolio
.....
done

but now it is printing each string with a fixed lenght and appending the space after the string.

Can you please help me.

Generally to handle spaces you change from a for loop to a while/read loop.
Just to make sure can you show an example input and desired output please?

Also use [ CODE ] tags to display code, logs or data for better readability and preserving formatting.

Code:

PORT=`${EFG_ISQL} -b <<-!
set nocount on
use ${EFG_DB}
go
select portId from PORTFOLIO 
go
!`

echo $PORT

for Portfolio in $PORT
do
     ........................
done

The input is like aaa, bbb, ccc, ddd dd, eee, fff, ggg gg

Output should be

Code:

aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd dd
eee
fff
ggg gg

I just donot want to print one below the other but take each one in the loop and do some operations.



I edited your tags so they take effect - just open this post in edit mode to see what I did

I would 1st change the commas and blanks that don't belong to the string into newlines so that every string is on a separate line and then pipe them into a while/read loop, where I can do something with every single line that is being processed:

Code:

$> cat infile
aaa, bbb, ccc, ddd dd, eee, fff, ggg gg
$> sed 's/, /\n/g' infile| while read LINE; do echo bla "${LINE}"; done
yo aaa
yo bbb
yo ccc
yo ddd dd
yo eee
yo fff
yo ggg gg

As example I just added that "bla" in front of every read line. You can do something else inside that while loop that would make more sense of course. If it is just for formatting text you could maybe just do it all in sed or awk etc.

HTH