How can I get the SOA serial number from a file with sed? - bash

Question

I store my SOA data for multiple domains in a single file that gets $INCLUDEd by zone files. I've written a small sed script that is supposed to get the serial number, increment it, then re-save the SOA file. It all works properly as long as the SOA file is in the proper format, with the entire record on one line, but it fails as soon as the record gets split into multiple lines.
For example, this works as input data:
# IN SOA dnsserver. hostmaster.example.net. ( 2013112202 21600 900 691200 86400 )
But this does not:
# IN SOA dnsserver. hostmaster.example.net. (
2013112202 ; Serial number
21600 ; Refresh every day, 86400 is 1 day
900 ; Retry refresh every 15 min
691200 ; Expire every 8 days
86400 ) ; Minimum TTL 1 day
I like comments, and I would like to spread things out. But I need my script to be able to find the serial number so that I can increment it and rewrite the file.
The SED that works on the single line is this:
SOA=$(sed 's/.*#.*SOA[^0-9]*//;s/[^0-9].*//' $SOAfile)
But for multi-line ... I'm a bit lost. I know I can join lines with N, but how do I know if I even need to? Do I need to write separate sed scripts based on some other analysis I do of the original file?
Please help! :-)

Answer 1

I wouldn't use sed for this. While you might be able to brute-force something, it would require a large amount of concentration to come up with it, and it would look like line noise, and so be almost unmaintainable afterwards.
What about this in awk?
The easiest way might be to split your records based on the # character, like so:
SOA=$(awk 'BEGIN{RS="#"} NR==2{print $6}' $SOAfile)
But that will break if you have comments containing # before the uncommented line, or if you have any comments between the # and the serial number. You could make a pipe to avoid these issues...
SOA=$(sed 's/;.*//;/^#/p;1,/^#/d' $SOAfile | awk 'BEGIN{RS="#"} NR==2{print $6}')
It may seem redundant to remove comments and strip the top of the file, but there could be other lines like #include which (however unlikely) could contain your record separator.
Or you could do something like this in pure awk:
SOA=$(awk -v field=6 '/^#/ { if($2=="IN"){field++} for(i=1;i<field;i++){if(i==NF){field=field-NF;getline;i=1}} print $field}' $SOAfile)
Or, broken out for easier reading:
awk -v field=6 '
/^#/ {
if ($2=="IN") {field++;}
for (i=1;i<field;i++) {
if(i==NF) {field=field-NF;getline;i=1;}
}
print $field; }' $SOAfile
This is flexible enough to handle any line splitting you might have, as it counts to field along multiple lines. It also adjusts the field number based on whether your zone segment contains the optional "IN" keyword.
A pure-sed solution would, instead of counting fields, use the first string of digits after an open bracket after your /^#/, like this:
SOA=$(sed -n '/^#/,/^[^;]*)/H;${;x;s/.*#[^(]*([^0-9]*//;s/[^0-9].*//;p;}' $SOAfile)
Looks like line noise, right? :-) Broken out for easier reading, it looks like this:
/^#/,/^[^;]*)/H # "Hold" the meaningful part of the file...
${ # Once we reach the end...
x # Copy the hold space back to the main buffer
s/.*#[^(]*([^0-9]*// # Remove stuff ahead of the serial
s/[^0-9].*// # Remove stuff after the serial
p # And print.
}
The idea here is that starting from the first line that begins with #, we copy the file into sed's hold space, then at the end of the file, do some substitutions to strip out all the text up to the serial number, and then after the serial number, and print whatever remains.
All of these work on single line and multi line zone SOA records I've tested with.

Answer 2

You can try the following - it's your original sed program preceded by commands to first read all input lines, if applicable:
SOA=$(sed -e ':a' -e '$!{N;ba' -e '}' -e 's/.*#.*SOA[^0-9]*//;s/[^0-9].*//' \
"$SOAfile")
This form will work with both single- and multi-line input files.
Multi-line input files are first read as a whole before applying the substitutions.
Note: The awkward separate -e options are needed to keep FreeBSD happy with respect to labels and branching commands, which need a literal \n for termination - using separate -e options is a more readable alternative to splicing in literal newlines with $'\n'.
Alternative solution, using awk:
SOA=$(awk -v RS='#' '$1 == "IN" && $2 == "SOA" { print $6 }' "$SOAfile")
Again, this will work with both single- and multi-line record definitions.
The only constraint is that comments must not precede the serial number.
Additionally, if a file contained multiple records, the above would collect ALL serial numbers, separated by a newline each.

Answer 3

Why sed? grep is simplest in this case:
grep -A1 -e '#.*SOA' 1 | grep -oe '[0-9]*'
or: (maybe better):
grep -A1 -e '#.*SOA' 1 | grep 'Serial number' | grep -oe '[0-9]*'

Answer 4

This might work for you (GNU sed):
sed -nr '/# IN SOA/{/[0-9]/!N;s/[^0-9]+([0-9]+).*/\1/p}' file
For lines that contain # IN SOA if the line contains no numbers append the next line. Then extract the first sequence of numbers from the line(s).