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Using for to iterate over the lines of a file

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roddomi
 PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:43 pm   

Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:34 pm
Posts: 1
Hi,

I have a file of commands with the following format:

exeCmd [Arg1 ... ArgN] > outFile 2>> errFile
[more lines like this one]

I would like to iterate with a 'for' over the lines of the file that match a particular pattern. Something like this:

for cmd in `grep pattern file`
do
echo $cmd
done

The problem is that 'for' uses a blank space as the IFS (internal field separator) by default. How can I change this so 'for' breaks output of the grep using the newline. I tried assigning IFS='\n' beforehand but this didn't work. I am trying not to use awk, if possible.

Thank for your help,

roddomi
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myownshadow
 PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:43 pm   
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Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 4:05 am
Posts: 37
Location: /dev/random
just a temporary solution; u can try to substitute blank space with something else with a pattern not found in file then substitute back
likewise;
Quote:
for cmd in `cat filename| grep pattern |sed s/\ /donuts/g`
do
tcmd=`echo $cmd | sed s/donuts/\ /g`
echo $tcmd
done
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jeo
 PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:33 pm   
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Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 2:05 pm
Posts: 242
Why not just change the IFS temporarily?

Code:
cat filename.txt |grep 'pattern'| while IFS= read command; do
  $command
done


Haven't tested that just now, but I think it should work like that...

Hope this helps!
-J
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DarthWavy
 PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 4:45 am   
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Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2007 7:12 am
Posts: 212
Location: London - UK
read can be used with a while loop to do ask you ask like so...

Code:
grep pattern file | while read cmd
do
  echo $cmd
done


This type of loop has disadvantages if you want to "exit" out of the loop as it creates a sub-shell for the loop.
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jeo
 PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 11:02 am   
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Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 2:05 pm
Posts: 242
lol... I posted one of my own pet peeves...

Code:
cat filename.txt |grep 'pattern'


Should just be
Code:
grep 'pattern' filename


:(
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