UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have written this code:

code
echo 'Now choose the file or files you want to merge your input with: \c'
read filenames
filelist=""
for file in $filenames; do
filelist="$filelist $file"
done
echo "Now that you've chosen these files ($filelist), please start typing: "
until [ $filelist/EOF` ]; do
paste - $filelist
done
/code

basically what i am trying to do is to use interactevely the command

paste - filename

in order to help the user merging his/her own input with an existing file. But usually, to exit from paste command, when used in this way, i press CTRL+C but here i would like to avoid this and tell my programme:

"When you arrive at the end of file $filelist, exit from paste command"

How can I do this? Thanx.

It's a little difficult understanding what you're trying to do. Perhaps if you forgot the code for a bit and gave more background about the task you are trying to accomplish, it would help.

This is how I'm interpreting what you're trying to do:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

echo -n 'Now choose the file or files you want to merge your input with: '
read -a filenames

echo -n "Now that you've chosen these files (${filenames[@]}), please start typing: "
read text

for file in "${filenames[@]}";do
    echo "$text" >> $file
done

Kent

hi! thanks for your help but your solution did not quite solve the problem so I'll try to explain it better! If you type this command directly in the shell:

paste - file (where 'file' is a text file you have somewhere!)

you will see that you will be prompt for some input and for every line you'll type, the shell will output the content of your file one line at the time. To exit you will have to press CTRL+C, otherwise you'll remain in the paste interactive mode.

What i am trying to achieve is this same thing but in a more friendly interactive way, so that the user will be prompt for filename and input and the two things will be merged together, one line at the time, (and not appended at the end of the file as you suggest) and eventually saved in a new file if the user wants to. My problem is that I dont know how to tell the shell when to stop so i know how i can make my user enter the 'paste' modality but dont know how to stop the process. So let's say i have a file "names" which contains

John
Nora
Andrew

Maybe the user wants to merge these names with some input like numbers or scores:

so he/she will type:
1
and the programme will answer with
1 John
then:
2
2 Nora
finally:
3
3 Andrew
and now that we are at the end of the file 'names', I want to exit and maybe to save this new merged file in a new file!

Hope my explanation makes it easier to understand. Any solution? thanks, stef