UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Specifically what is the purpose of sed?
What is f?
Why is the 'cp f $phonefile' line needed when the script ‘goes live'?
Why might that two commands following sed be commented out at the present time ( i.e., during development)?
Thanks in advance!




if test $accept = "Y"
then
sed /$number/d $phonefile > f
# cp f $phonefile
# rm f
fi

It would be nice to see what information is being processed, but here goes a shot in the dark. Anyone else feel free to correct me....

Looks like this is trying to extract the variable $number from the $phonefile. Then it copies the results to "f".
The following two functions are disabled because the line start with #. But it would try to copy the results of "f" and make that the $phonefile and finally remove the temporary "f" directory.
"fi" just ends the if loop.

its not extracting the string specified by the variable its deleteing the string from the file specified by the phonefile variable and writing the o/p to another file