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Moving lines of file to command line

 
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# 1  
Old 01-07-2014
Moving lines of file to command line
I have a file in which each line is the name of another file. Is there a way to serve them to the command line? For example, if the file contains
Code:
 
 file1.txt
 file2.txt
 file3.txt
 ...
 file9.txt

is there a way to insert them in the command as a batch?

If I ran a command like
Code:
 
 grep "searching_for" file[1-9].txt

it would be replace the file...txt

Thanks in advance
# 2  
Old 01-07-2014
Assuming that the names of the files in your text file don't contain any whitespace characters, your file list isn't "huge", and you're using a shell that recognizes standard command substitution syntax, the following should work:
Code:
grep "searching_for" $(cat name_of_file_containing_file_list)

This User Gave Thanks to Don Cragun For This Post:
wbport
# 3  
Old 01-07-2014
Or
Code:
< name_of_file_containing_file_list xargs grep "searching_for"

This User Gave Thanks to MadeInGermany For This Post:
wbport
# 4  
Old 01-08-2014
Thank you people. Don's suggestion tried to put a $ in front of the first item, but I got
Code:

 grep "\.sh" `cat list.txt`

to work. The xargs suggestion performed as advertised.

Thanks again.
# 5  
Old 01-08-2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by wbport
Thank you people. Don's suggestion tried to put a $ in front of the first item,
No. "$(...)" is just the modern and suggested way to write so-called "process substitution". The way you do it:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wbport
but I got
Code:

 grep "\.sh" `cat list.txt`

to work.
is deprecated and you should definitely avoid this. The only reason the shell still understands it is backwards compatibility.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 
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