UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

I am coding for a requirement where I need to read a file & get the values of SUB_DATE. Once the dates are found, i need to move the files based on these dates from one directory to another.

ie, this is how it will be in the file,

SUB_DATE = 20120608,20120607,20120606,20120606

Now, i need to move the file (with filename like a.20120608,a.20120607 etc) from /path/source to /path/destination.

Can anybody shed some light on how to achieve this ?

Thanks Much
Freddie

This will do it for you:

Code:

for x in `sed 's/^SUB_DATE = //;s/,/\n/g' test.txt`
do
  mv /source_directory/a.$x /target_directory
done

# File test.txt has records like:
SUB_DATE = 20120608,20120607,20120606,20120606

Thanks Spacebar for your reply.

Yes,your code seems to work for all the dates except the first date in the file. ie 20120608. Here is the error message I got,

Can you pls help.

Thanks
Freddie

---------- Post updated at 11:49 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:42 AM ----------

Never Mind, I figured out the issue.

The Space between the Equals ( = ) was causing the problem.

Thanks for your help. Appreciate it.

Freddie

It appears that the contents of the file aren't exactly as you posted in your initial post. Working with spacebar's original post this might help:

Code:

sed 's/.*= //;s/,/\n/g' test.txt | while read x
do
  mv "/source_directory/a.$x" /target_directory/
done

Also note the change to read from sed's stdout rather than using backtics. Using the results of a command as input to the for isn't good practice (Useless Use of Cat Award there is a section on useless backtics too). I also think it's good practice to add a slant (/) to the end of the directory name on a mv command; if the directory doesn't exist, then you'll get an error rather than all files being moved to the same file name resulting in the loss of all files except the last.

Thanks Agama. I agree with you. (Made the changes you suggested).

Now, i have a different issue. In the test.txt file, I have one more variable named BUS_DATE (& it comes first in the file).

$cat test.txt

BUS_DATE=20120609
SUB_DATE=20120608,20120607,20120606,20120605

Looks like it is taking the BUS_DATE & then goes to the SUB_DATE.

Pls find the error msg below,

I dont need to pass the BUS_DATE. Any thoughts.

Thanks much
Freddie

Sorry -- wasn't thinking about the possibility of other matches.

Try something like this:

Code:

sed '/SUB_DATE/ !d; s/.*=//; s/,/\n/g' input-file | while read x
do
   echo "$x"
done

It should ignore any line that doesn't contain SUB_DATE and then break each element from the comma separated list into a newline separated list that will be properly read by the while. Was thinking multiple lines with my suggestion.