UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I need a script that reads the out put of a command (softwareupdate --list) and will tally up the number of asterisks in the output and tell me how many there were. How do I go about getting my script to treat asterisks as a regular character and not a wildcard or some other operator?

Code:

> cat file15
the end is here
and * and more ** are present
i wonder * if * there* more **
than *
** I can count
> tr "*" "~" <file15 | tr "\n" " " | tr "~" "\n" | wc -l
11

Note:
The tr command, sometimes in conjunction with sed and cut, can do so many cool things to translate one character to another. Read the manpages on it to undertand it better.

OMG it was so easy, i got it!
cat outputoffile |grep "*"|wc -l

edit: sorry JoeyG I posted this before i saw what you said, I will try to understand what you wrote. Thanks!

One way -

Code:

softwareupdate --list | tr -dc '*' | wc -c

Thanks guys, this is basically what I think I will use
#!/bin/bash
SU=`softwareupdate --list`

echo $SU |grep "*" |wc -l

Code:

softwareupdate --list |grep "*" |wc -l

Lose the subprocess, the echo and the SU variable. A one-liner like this is not important, but doing what you did in a big script that runs code that uses a lot of resources can eat your system. Or take hours.

Ok, I noticed one problem, there is sometimes a space or two in the output.. how do I get it to ignore the spaces?

This is what I mean:
Software Update Tool
Copyright 2002-2005 Apple

Software Update found the following new or updated software:
* MacProSMCUpdate-1.1
Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update (1.1), 970K [recommended]
* iTunesX-8.0.1
iTunes (8.0.1), 59910K [recommended]
* SecUpd2008-007Intel-1.0
Security Update 2008-007 (Intel) (1.0), 168250K [recommended] [restart]