I am planning a script to manage some pieces of my Linux systems and am at the point of deciding if I want to use bash or python.
I would prefer to do this as a Bash script simply because the commands are easier, but the real deciding factor is configuration. I need to be able to store a multi-dimensional array in the configuration file to tell the script what to do with itself. Storing simple key=value pairs in config files is easy enough with bash, but the only way I can think of to do a multi-dimensional array is a two layer parsing engine, something like
array=&d1|v1;v2;v3&d2|v1;v2;v3
but the marshall/unmarshall code could get to be a bear and its far from user friendly for the next poor sap that has to administer this. If i can't do this easily in bash i will simply write the configs to an xml file and write the script in python.
Is there an easy way to do this in bash?
thanks everyone.
Bash does not support multidimensional arrays, nor hashes, and it seems that you want a hash that values are arrays. This solution is not very beautiful, a solution with an xml file should be better :
array=('d1=(v1 v2 v3)' 'd2=(v1 v2 v3)')
for elt in "${array[#]}";do eval $elt;done
echo "d1 ${#d1[#]} ${d1[#]}"
echo "d2 ${#d2[#]} ${d2[#]}"
EDIT: this answer is quite old, since since bash 4 supports hash tables, see also this answer for a solution without eval.
Bash doesn't have multi-dimensional array. But you can simulate a somewhat similar effect with associative arrays. The following is an example of associative array pretending to be used as multi-dimensional array:
declare -A arr
arr[0,0]=0
arr[0,1]=1
arr[1,0]=2
arr[1,1]=3
echo "${arr[0,0]} ${arr[0,1]}" # will print 0 1
If you don't declare the array as associative (with -A), the above won't work. For example, if you omit the declare -A arr line, the echo will print 2 3 instead of 0 1, because 0,0, 1,0 and such will be taken as arithmetic expression and evaluated to 0 (the value to the right of the comma operator).
This works thanks to 1. "indirect expansion" with ! which adds one layer of indirection, and 2. "substring expansion" which behaves differently with arrays and can be used to "slice" them as described https://stackoverflow.com/a/1336245/317623
# Define each array and then add it to the main one
SUB_0=("name0" "value 0")
SUB_1=("name1" "value;1")
MAIN_ARRAY=(
SUB_0[#]
SUB_1[#]
)
# Loop and print it. Using offset and length to extract values
COUNT=${#MAIN_ARRAY[#]}
for ((i=0; i<$COUNT; i++))
do
NAME=${!MAIN_ARRAY[i]:0:1}
VALUE=${!MAIN_ARRAY[i]:1:1}
echo "NAME ${NAME}"
echo "VALUE ${VALUE}"
done
It's based off of this answer here
If you want to use a bash script and keep it easy to read recommend putting the data in structured JSON, and then use lightweight tool jq in your bash command to iterate through the array. For example with the following dataset:
[
{"specialId":"123",
"specialName":"First"},
{"specialId":"456",
"specialName":"Second"},
{"specialId":"789",
"specialName":"Third"}
]
You can iterate through this data with a bash script and jq like this:
function loopOverArray(){
jq -c '.[]' testing.json | while read i; do
# Do stuff here
echo "$i"
done
}
loopOverArray
Outputs:
{"specialId":"123","specialName":"First"}
{"specialId":"456","specialName":"Second"}
{"specialId":"789","specialName":"Third"}
Independent of the shell being used (sh, ksh, bash, ...) the following approach works pretty well for n-dimensional arrays (the sample covers a 2-dimensional array).
In the sample the line-separator (1st dimension) is the space character. For introducing a field separator (2nd dimension) the standard unix tool tr is used. Additional separators for additional dimensions can be used in the same way.
Of course the performance of this approach is not very well, but if performance is not a criteria this approach is quite generic and can solve many problems:
array2d="1.1:1.2:1.3 2.1:2.2 3.1:3.2:3.3:3.4"
function process2ndDimension {
for dimension2 in $*
do
echo -n $dimension2 " "
done
echo
}
function process1stDimension {
for dimension1 in $array2d
do
process2ndDimension `echo $dimension1 | tr : " "`
done
}
process1stDimension
The output of that sample looks like this:
1.1 1.2 1.3
2.1 2.2
3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4
After a lot of trial and error i actually find the best, clearest and easiest multidimensional array on bash is to use a regular var. Yep.
Advantages: You don't have to loop through a big array, you can just echo "$var" and use grep/awk/sed. It's easy and clear and you can have as many columns as you like.
Example:
$ var=$(echo -e 'kris hansen oslo\nthomas jonson peru\nbibi abu johnsonville\njohnny lipp peru')
$ echo "$var"
kris hansen oslo
thomas johnson peru
bibi abu johnsonville
johnny lipp peru
If you want to find everyone in peru
$ echo "$var" | grep peru
thomas johnson peru
johnny lipp peru
Only grep(sed) in the third field
$ echo "$var" | sed -n -E '/(.+) (.+) peru/p'
thomas johnson peru
johnny lipp peru
If you only want x field
$ echo "$var" | awk '{print $2}'
hansen
johnson
abu
johnny
Everyone in peru that's called thomas and just return his lastname
$ echo "$var" |grep peru|grep thomas|awk '{print $2}'
johnson
Any query you can think of... supereasy.
To change an item:
$ var=$(echo "$var"|sed "s/thomas/pete/")
To delete a row that contains "x"
$ var=$(echo "$var"|sed "/thomas/d")
To change another field in the same row based on a value from another item
$ var=$(echo "$var"|sed -E "s/(thomas) (.+) (.+)/\1 test \3/")
$ echo "$var"
kris hansen oslo
thomas test peru
bibi abu johnsonville
johnny lipp peru
Of course looping works too if you want to do that
$ for i in "$var"; do echo "$i"; done
kris hansen oslo
thomas jonson peru
bibi abu johnsonville
johnny lipp peru
The only gotcha iv'e found with this is that you must always quote the
var(in the example; both var and i) or things will look like this
$ for i in "$var"; do echo $i; done
kris hansen oslo thomas jonson peru bibi abu johnsonville johnny lipp peru
and someone will undoubtedly say it won't work if you have spaces in your input, however that can be fixed by using another delimeter in your input, eg(using an utf8 char now to emphasize that you can choose something your input won't contain, but you can choose whatever ofc):
$ var=$(echo -e 'field one☥field two hello☥field three yes moin\nfield 1☥field 2☥field 3 dsdds aq')
$ for i in "$var"; do echo "$i"; done
field one☥field two hello☥field three yes moin
field 1☥field 2☥field 3 dsdds aq
$ echo "$var" | awk -F '☥' '{print $3}'
field three yes moin
field 3 dsdds aq
$ var=$(echo "$var"|sed -E "s/(field one)☥(.+)☥(.+)/\1☥test☥\3/")
$ echo "$var"
field one☥test☥field three yes moin
field 1☥field 2☥field 3 dsdds aq
If you want to store newlines in your input, you could convert the newline to something else before input and convert it back again on output(or don't use bash...). Enjoy!
I am posting the following because it is a very simple and clear way to mimic (at least to some extent) the behavior of a two-dimensional array in Bash. It uses a here-file (see the Bash manual) and read (a Bash builtin command):
## Store the "two-dimensional data" in a file ($$ is just the process ID of the shell, to make sure the filename is unique)
cat > physicists.$$ <<EOF
Wolfgang Pauli 1900
Werner Heisenberg 1901
Albert Einstein 1879
Niels Bohr 1885
EOF
nbPhysicists=$(wc -l physicists.$$ | cut -sf 1 -d ' ') # Number of lines of the here-file specifying the physicists.
## Extract the needed data
declare -a person # Create an indexed array (necessary for the read command).
while read -ra person; do
firstName=${person[0]}
familyName=${person[1]}
birthYear=${person[2]}
echo "Physicist ${firstName} ${familyName} was born in ${birthYear}"
# Do whatever you need with data
done < physicists.$$
## Remove the temporary file
rm physicists.$$
Output:
Physicist Wolfgang Pauli was born in 1900 Physicist Werner Heisenberg was born in 1901 Physicist Albert Einstein was born in 1879 Physicist Niels Bohr was born in 1885
The way it works:
The lines in the temporary file created play the role of one-dimensional vectors, where the blank spaces (or whatever separation character you choose; see the description of the read command in the Bash manual) separate the elements of these vectors.
Then, using the read command with its -a option, we loop over each line of the file (until we reach end of file). For each line, we can assign the desired fields (= words) to an array, which we declared just before the loop. The -r option to the read command prevents backslashes from acting as escape characters, in case we typed backslashes in the here-document physicists.$$.
In conclusion a file is created as a 2D-array, and its elements are extracted using a loop over each line, and using the ability of the read command to assign words to the elements of an (indexed) array.
Slight improvement:
In the above code, the file physicists.$$ is given as input to the while loop, so that it is in fact passed to the read command. However, I found that this causes problems when I have another command asking for input inside the while loop. For example, the select command waits for standard input, and if placed inside the while loop, it will take input from physicists.$$, instead of prompting in the command-line for user input.
To correct this, I use the -u option of read, which allows to read from a file descriptor. We only have to create a file descriptor (with the exec command) corresponding to physicists.$$ and to give it to the -u option of read, as in the following code:
## Store the "two-dimensional data" in a file ($$ is just the process ID of the shell, to make sure the filename is unique)
cat > physicists.$$ <<EOF
Wolfgang Pauli 1900
Werner Heisenberg 1901
Albert Einstein 1879
Niels Bohr 1885
EOF
nbPhysicists=$(wc -l physicists.$$ | cut -sf 1 -d ' ') # Number of lines of the here-file specifying the physicists.
exec {id_file}<./physicists.$$ # Create a file descriptor stored in 'id_file'.
## Extract the needed data
declare -a person # Create an indexed array (necessary for the read command).
while read -ra person -u "${id_file}"; do
firstName=${person[0]}
familyName=${person[1]}
birthYear=${person[2]}
echo "Physicist ${firstName} ${familyName} was born in ${birthYear}"
# Do whatever you need with data
done
## Close the file descriptor
exec {id_file}<&-
## Remove the temporary file
rm physicists.$$
Notice that the file descriptor is closed at the end.
Bash does not supports multidimensional array, but we can implement using Associate array. Here the indexes are the key to retrieve the value. Associate array is available in bash version 4.
#!/bin/bash
declare -A arr2d
rows=3
columns=2
for ((i=0;i<rows;i++)) do
for ((j=0;j<columns;j++)) do
arr2d[$i,$j]=$i
done
done
for ((i=0;i<rows;i++)) do
for ((j=0;j<columns;j++)) do
echo ${arr2d[$i,$j]}
done
done
Expanding on Paul's answer - here's my version of working with associative sub-arrays in bash:
declare -A SUB_1=(["name1key"]="name1val" ["name2key"]="name2val")
declare -A SUB_2=(["name3key"]="name3val" ["name4key"]="name4val")
STRING_1="string1val"
STRING_2="string2val"
MAIN_ARRAY=(
"${SUB_1[*]}"
"${SUB_2[*]}"
"${STRING_1}"
"${STRING_2}"
)
echo "COUNT: " ${#MAIN_ARRAY[#]}
for key in ${!MAIN_ARRAY[#]}; do
IFS=' ' read -a val <<< ${MAIN_ARRAY[$key]}
echo "VALUE: " ${val[#]}
if [[ ${#val[#]} -gt 1 ]]; then
for subkey in ${!val[#]}; do
subval=${val[$subkey]}
echo "SUBVALUE: " ${subval}
done
fi
done
It works with mixed values in the main array - strings/arrays/assoc. arrays
The key here is to wrap the subarrays in single quotes and use * instead of # when storing a subarray inside the main array so it would get stored as a single, space separated string: "${SUB_1[*]}"
Then it makes it easy to parse an array out of that when looping through values with IFS=' ' read -a val <<< ${MAIN_ARRAY[$key]}
The code above outputs:
COUNT: 4
VALUE: name1val name2val
SUBVALUE: name1val
SUBVALUE: name2val
VALUE: name4val name3val
SUBVALUE: name4val
SUBVALUE: name3val
VALUE: string1val
VALUE: string2val
Lots of answers found here for creating multidimensional arrays in bash.
And without exception, all are obtuse and difficult to use.
If MD arrays are a required criteria, it is time to make a decision:
Use a language that supports MD arrays
My preference is Perl. Most would probably choose Python.
Either works.
Store the data elsewhere
JSON and jq have already been suggested. XML has also been suggested, though for your use JSON and jq would likely be simpler.
It would seem though that Bash may not be the best choice for what you need to do.
Sometimes the correct question is not "How do I do X in tool Y?", but rather "Which tool would be best to do X?"
I do this using associative arrays since bash 4 and setting IFS to a value that can be defined manually.
The purpose of this approach is to have arrays as values of associative array keys.
In order to set IFS back to default just unset it.
unset IFS
This is an example:
#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
# used as value in asscciative array
test=(
"x3:x4:x5"
)
# associative array
declare -A wow=(
["1"]=$test
["2"]=$test
)
echo "default IFS"
for w in ${wow[#]}; do
echo " $w"
done
IFS=:
echo "IFS=:"
for w in ${wow[#]}; do
for t in $w; do
echo " $t"
done
done
echo -e "\n or\n"
for w in ${!wow[#]}
do
echo " $w"
for t in ${wow[$w]}
do
echo " $t"
done
done
unset IFS
unset w
unset t
unset wow
unset test
The output of the script below is:
default IFS
x3:x4:x5
x3:x4:x5
IFS=:
x3
x4
x5
x3
x4
x5
or
1
x3
x4
x5
2
x3
x4
x5
I've got a pretty simple yet smart workaround:
Just define the array with variables in its name. For example:
for (( i=0 ; i<$(($maxvalue + 1)) ; i++ ))
do
for (( j=0 ; j<$(($maxargument + 1)) ; j++ ))
do
declare -a array$i[$j]=((Your rule))
done
done
Don't know whether this helps since it's not exactly what you asked for, but it works for me. (The same could be achieved just with variables without the array)
echo "Enter no of terms"
read count
for i in $(seq 1 $count)
do
t=` expr $i - 1 `
for j in $(seq $t -1 0)
do
echo -n " "
done
j=` expr $count + 1 `
x=` expr $j - $i `
for k in $(seq 1 $x)
do
echo -n "* "
done
echo ""
done
Related
this is probably a very simple question. I looked at other answers but couldn't come up with a solution. I have a 365 line date file. file as below,
01-01-2000
02-01-2000
I need to read this file line by line and assign each day to a separate variable. like this,
d001=01-01-2000
d002=02-01-2000
I tried while read commands but couldn't get them to work.It takes a lot of time to shoot one by one. How can I do it quickly?
Trying to create named variable out of an associative array, is time waste and not supported de-facto. Better use this, using an associative array:
#!/bin/bash
declare -A array
while read -r line; do
printf -v key 'd%03d' $((++c))
array[$key]=$line
done < file
Output
for i in "${!array[#]}"; do echo "key=$i value=${array[$i]}"; done
key=d001 value=01-01-2000
key=d002 value=02-01-2000
Assumptions:
an array is acceptable
array index should start with 1
Sample input:
$ cat sample.dat
01-01-2000
02-01-2000
03-01-2000
04-01-2000
05-01-2000
One bash/mapfile option:
unset d # make sure variable is not currently in use
mapfile -t -O1 d < sample.dat # load each line from file into separate array location
This generates:
$ typeset -p d
declare -a d=([1]="01-01-2000" [2]="02-01-2000" [3]="03-01-2000" [4]="04-01-2000" [5]="05-01-2000")
$ for i in "${!d[#]}"; do echo "d[$i] = ${d[i]}"; done
d[1] = 01-01-2000
d[2] = 02-01-2000
d[3] = 03-01-2000
d[4] = 04-01-2000
d[5] = 05-01-2000
In OP's code, references to $d001 now become ${d[1]}.
A quick one-liner would be:
eval $(awk 'BEGIN{cnt=0}{printf "d%3.3d=\"%s\"\n",cnt,$0; cnt++}' your_file)
eval makes the shell variables known inside your script or shell. Use echo $d000 to show the first one of the newly defined variables. There should be no shell special characters (like * and $) inside your_file. Remove eval $() to see the result of the awk command. The \" quoted %s is to allow spaces in the variable values. If you don't have any spaces in your_file you can remove the \" before and after %s.
I run a script with the param -A AA/BB . To get an array with AA and BB, i can do this.
INPUT_PARAM=(${AIRLINE_OPTION//-A / }) #get rid of the '-A ' in the begining
LIST=(${AIRLINES_PARAM//\// }) # split by '/'
Can we achieve this in a single line?
Thanks in advance.
One way
IFS=/ read -r -a LIST <<< "${AIRLINE_OPTION//-A /}"
This places the output from the parameter substitution ${AIRLINE_OPTION//-A /} into a "here-string" and uses the bash read built-in to parse this into an array. Splitting by / is achieved by setting the value of IFS to / for the read command.
LIST=( $(IFS=/; for x in ${AIRLINE_OPTION#-A }; do printf "$x "; done) )
This is a portable solution, but if your read supports -a and you don't mind portability then you should go for #1_CR's solution.
With awk, for example, you can create an array and store it in LIST variable:
$ LIST=($(awk -F"[\/ ]" '{print $2,$3}' <<< "-A AA/BB"))
Result:
$ echo ${LIST[0]}
AA
$ echo ${LIST[1]}
BB
Explanation
-F"[\/ ]" defines two possible field separators: a space or a slash /.
'{print $2$3}' prints the 2nd and 3rd fields based on those separators.
For example:
((
extract everything here, ignore the rest
))
I know how to ignore everything within, but I don't know how to do the opposite. Basically, it'll be a file and it needs to extract the data between the two points and then output it to another file. I've tried countless approaches, and all seem to tell me the indentation I'm stating doesn't exist in the file, when it does.
If somebody could point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful.
If your data are "line oriented", so the marker is alone (as in the example), you can try some of the following:
function getdata() {
cat - <<EOF
before
((
extract everything here, ignore the rest
someother text
))
after
EOF
}
echo "sed - with two seds"
getdata | sed -n '/((/,/))/p' | sed '1d;$d'
echo "Another sed solution"
getdata | sed -n '1,/((/d; /))/,$d;p'
echo "With GNU sed"
getdata | gsed -n '/((/{:a;n;/))/b;p;ba}'
echo "With perl"
getdata | perl -0777 -pe "s/.*\(\(\s*\\n(.*)?\)\).*/\$1/s"
Ps: yes, its looks like a dance of crazy toothpicks
Assuming you want to extract the string inside (( and )):
VAR="abc((def))ghi"
echo "$VAR"
VAR=${VAR##*((}
VAR=${VAR%%))*}
echo "$VAR"
## cuts away the longest string from the beginning; # cuts away the shortest string from the beginning; %% cuts away the longest string at the end; % cuts away the shortes string at the end
The file :
$ cat /tmp/l
((
extract everything here, ignore the rest
someother text
))
The script
$ awk '$1=="((" {p=1;next} $1=="))" {p=o;next} p' /tmp/l
extract everything here, ignore the rest
someother text
sed -n '/^((/,/^))/ { /^((/b; /^))/b; p }'
Brief explanation:
/^((/,/^))/: range addressing (inclusive)
{ /^((/b; /^))/b; p }: sequence of 3 commands
1. skip line with ^((
2. skip line with ^))
3. print
The line skipping is required to make the range selection exclusive.
I have a file that has two columns of floating point values. I also have a C program that takes a floating point value as input and returns another floating point value as output.
What I'd like to do is the following: for each row in the original, execute the C program with the value in the first column as input, and then print out the first column (unchanged) followed by the second column minus the result of the C program.
As an example, suppose c_program returns the square of the input and behaves like this:
$ c_program 4
16
$
and suppose data_file looks like this:
1 10
2 11
3 12
4 13
What I'd like to return as output, in this case, is
1 9
2 7
3 3
4 -3
To write this in really sketchy pseudocode, I want to do something like this:
awk '{print $1, $2 - `c_program $1`}' data_file
But of course, I can't just pass $1, the awk variable, into a call to c_program. What's the right way to do this, and preferably, how could I do it while still maintaining the "awk one-liner"? (I don't want to pull out a sledgehammer and write a full-fledged C program to do this.)
you just do everything in awk
awk '{cmd="c_program "$1; cmd|getline l;print $1,$2-l}' file
This shows how to execute a command in awk:
ls | awk '/^a/ {system("ls -ld " $1)}'
You could use a bash script instead:
while read line
do
FIRST=`echo $line | cut -d' ' -f1`
SECOND=`echo $line | cut -d' ' -f2`
OUT=`expr $SECOND \* 4`
echo $FIRST $OUT `expr $OUT - $SECOND`
done
The shell is a better tool for this using a little used feature. There is a shell variable IFS which is the Input Field Separator that sh uses to split command lines when parsing; it defaults to <Space><Tab><Newline> which is why ls foo is interpreted as two words.
When set is given arguments not beginning with - it sets the positional parameters of the shell to the contents of the arguments as split via IFS, thus:
#!/bin/sh
while read line ; do
set $line
subtrahend=`c_program $1`
echo $1 `expr $2 - $subtrahend`
done < data_file
Pure Bash, without using any external executables other than your program:
#!/bin/bash
while read num1 num2
do
(( result = $(c_program num2) - num1 ))
echo "$num1 $result"
done
As others have pointed out: awk is not not well equipped for this job. Here is a suggestion in bash:
#!/bin/sh
data_file=$1
while read column_1 column_2 the_rest
do
((result=$(c_program $column_1)-$column_2))
echo $column_1 $result "$the_rest"
done < $data_file
Save this to a file, say myscript.sh, then invoke it as:
sh myscript.sh data_file
The read command reads each line from the data file (which was redirected to the standard input) and assign the first 2 columns to $column_1 and $column_2 variables. The rest of the line, if there is any, is stored in $the_rest.
Next, I calculate the result based on your requirements and prints out the line based on your requirements. Note that I surround $the_rest with quotes to reserve spacing. Failure to do so will result in multiple spaces in the input file to be squeezed into one.
I use code in !/bin/sh like this:
LIST1="mazda toyota honda"
LIST2="2009 2006 2010"
for m in $LIST1
do
echo $m
done
As you can see this currently prints out only the make of the car.
How can I include the year to each "echo" based on the same positions so that I get results like:
mazda 2009
toyota 2006
honda 2010
?
Assuming bash
array1=(mazda toyota honda)
array2=(2009 2006 2010)
for index in ${!array1[*]}
do
printf "%s %s\n" ${array1[$index]} ${array2[$index]}
done
Well, bash does have arrays, see man bash. The generic posix shell does not.
The shell is not precisely a macro processor, however, and so any metaprogramming must be processed by an eval or, in bash, with the ${!variable} syntax. That is, in a macro processor like nroff you can easily fake up arrays by making variables called a1, a2, a3, a4, etc.
You can do that in the posix shell but requires a lot of eval's or the equivalent like $(($a)).
$ i=1 j=2; eval a$i=12 a$j=34
$ for i in 1 2; do echo $((a$i)); done
12
34
$
And for a bash-specific example...
$ a=(56 78)
$ echo ${a[0]}
56
$ echo ${a[1]}
78
$
You can use arrays but just to be different here's a method that doesn't need them:
LIST1="mazda toyota honda"
LIST2="2009 2006 2010"
paste -d' ' <(echo $LIST1 | tr ' ' '\n') <(echo $LIST2 | tr ' ' '\n')
You can use the $IFS var to fake arrays for example (works with any posix compilant shell):
hosts=mingw:bsd:linux:osx # for example you have the variable with all aviable hosts
# the advantage between other methods is that you have still one element and all contens get adressed through this
old_ifs=$IFS #save the old $IFS
IFS=: # say sh to seperate all commands by :
for var in $hosts ; do
# now we can use every element of $var
IFS=$old_ifs
echo $var
done
IFS=$Old_ifs
If you wrap this in a function you can use them like a real array