UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

we are using Linux Red hat version 9 and using bash shell .

Can any one help me in passing Name field interactivly and search the names from the data??Say I have
ARTHUR, SMITH, DANIS, CHARLES,GEORGE and likewise names in the
address's data and I want to search the same from the awk script .
i.e. I may want to pass two names or sometime five names :

echo -n 'Enter the Names you want to search:' >/dev/tty
read nam
awk '{ }' addr-dat > nnames

We can pass the name within the scripts but I want it to be flexible , I dont want hard-coding the name within the script but want to pass it from
the outside and it may be three or five names .

Thanks in advance .

Well, I don't use bash, I use korn (one of the main reasons being array manipulation, I use arrays a lot), and in korn is really simple. Maybe this will help you figure it out in bash.
This basically takes whatever you enter and makes it an array, regardless of the number of names you enter at the "tell me" prompt.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
echo "tell me: "
read NAMES
set -A LIST $(echo ${NAMES})

Now that you have the LIST array, then you can loop it and pass each element to awk or grep or whatever, regardless of how many names you have.

Code:

for x in $(echo ${LIST[*]}); do
...your commands...
done

Thanks lot system shock but sorry I have not eloborated it fully,

What I wanted is that can we place the name simulteneolsy??May it be
two , three ,four or five.

i.e.
if ( nam=='$1'|| nam=='$2' || nam=='$3' )
{
script
}' input file name > o/p file name

with one by one it will take more as the data is very large ??

Thanks in advance .