UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

Sorry if this is a newbie question. I guess you can use either awk or shell script for this sequence of operations, but knowing very little about either of them I'm not sure how I should try to write this.

The basic objective is to copy certain files that are scattered all over my computer into a single/new directory. I have a tab separated txt files, one of whose column contains the filename. So, I need to do the following operations:

1. Open a txt file
2. Read in the 2nd column which contains the filenames
3. Make a for loop to iterate over each filename
4. Within this loop, search my computer for the location of that particular filename
5. Copy the file into a new directory
6. End

I think I know how to get to step 2 using awk, but don't know how to iterate over all the filenames using awk. Also, is there a way that I can use grep to find the files from within awk.

thanks for any suggestions/hints!

Is this a homework assignment?

Hi Don,

I wish!

Okay, here's what I've go so far:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

#
# 1. Read in input file and separate out filename
# 2. Search for it
# 3. Copy it in a directory
# 4. Create file with old and new file paths

outdir=/Users/pc/test/newdata
outfile=copyDetails.txt
ofile=${outdir}/${outfile}
header="From    To"
echo "${header}" >> $ofile

while read Barcode Sampleid Other
do
        [ "$Barcode" == "barcode" ] && continue
        pattern="*${Barcode}*"
        names=`find /Users/pc/test -name "*${Barcode}*"`
        myname=`echo $names | cut -d' ' -f1`
        cp ${myname} ${outdir}
        from=$myname
        to="${outdir}/${Barcode}"
        oline=`echo ${from}"\t"${to}`
        echo ${oline} >> $ofile


done < ../data/worksheet.txt


echo "Finished"
exit 0

Not elegant, but works for the original purpose. The input file has 3 columns and the filename is in the column 'Barcode'. I am also trying to create a file that will keep a record of the origin and destination of the file. My questions:

1. The code lines:

Code:

        oline=`echo ${from}"\t"${to}`
        echo ${oline} >> $ofile

don't give a tab separated output. The '\t' is written into the file as it is. What am I doing wrong?

2. Any comments to improve the code -- I'm just beginning here...


thanks!!

echo, most likely, need the flag -e in order to interpret the backslash

Code:

oline=`echo -e ${from}"\t"${to}`

Thanks! Got it.

If portability matters one should use printf

Code:

printf "%s\t%s\n" "$from" "$to" >> $ofile

Thanks! That is probably a cleaner way to do it.