Bashscripts.org

I have a script where a user enters in information which is read as a variable, then appends the information to a file. Each time it appends it is a new line, and I would like each new line in the appended file to be an incremental number.

if [ $ANSWER2 = "y" -o $ANSWER2 = "Y" ]
then
echo -e "$NAME\t$RELATION\t$PHONE" >> ~/.database

so from my script it will append name, relation and phone variables to .database, but I would like to have it so each new line has an incremented number, starting at 001. I'm fairly new to bash scripting so I'm not sure if I'm posting in the right section.

[edit]

I was playing around a bit and I have a temporary solution, but I don't like how I have two database files and the nl command can make the file a bit messy...

if [ $ANSWER2 = "y" -o $ANSWER2 = "Y" ]
then
echo -e "$NAME\t$RELATION\t$PHONE" >> ~/.database2
fi
nl ~/.database2 > ~/.database

hi,

I'd rather read last line from .database to get its last registered number
if .database is empty,or doesn't exist num is 1

let's say .database looks like this :
<num>\t<name>\t<relation>\t<phone>

i'd get last num like this:

and send data in like this:


aside, you'd better not use uppercase variable names (even for readibility), it's reserved for environmental variables, by convention.