Reading from an archive using Bourne Shell - shell

Question

I am trying to use Bourne shell scripting for the first time ever, and I cannot seem to figure out determining how to save text from a file to internal script variables. The file format is as follows:
acc.text
Jason Bourne 213.4
Alice Deweger 1
Mark Harrington 312
The current script that I have (which might be ENTIRELY incorrect as I am simply creating it in NotePad++ without using an actual shell console) is as follows:
#!/bin/sh
process_file()
{
FILE = $1;
SALARYARRAY;
NAMEARRAY;
COUNTER = 0;
while read line
do
$NAMEARRAY[$COUNTER] =
$SALARYARRAY[$COUNTER] =
$COUNTER + 1;
echo $NAMEARRAY[$COUNTER]:$SALARYARRAY[$COUNTER];
done < "$FILE"
order_Map
}
# Function is not complete as of now, will later order SALARYARRAY in descending order
order_Map()
{
i = 0;
for i in $COUNTER
do
if ($SALARYARRAY[
done
}
##
# Main Script Body
#
# Takes a filename input by user, passes to process_file()
##
PROGRAMTITLE = "Account Processing Shell Script (APS)"
FILENAME = "acc.$$"
echo $PROGRAMTITLE
echo Please specify filename for processing
read $FILENAME
while(! -f $FILE || ! -r $FILE)
do
echo Error while attempting to write to file. Please specify file for processing:
read $FILENAME
done
echo Processing the file...
process_file $FILENAME

Answer 1

I have fixed some of your script. You need to cut out the name and salary fields from each line before storing them into the array.
#!/bin/bash
process_file()
{
file=$1;
counter=0
while read line
do
#the name is the first two fields
name=`echo $line | cut -d' ' -f1,2`
NAMEARRAY[$counter]="$name"
#the salary is the third field
salary=`echo $line | cut -d' ' -f3`
SALARYARRAY[$counter]="$salary"
echo ${NAMEARRAY[$counter]}:${SALARYARRAY[$counter]}
counter=$(($counter+1))
done < $file
}
##
# Main Script Body
#
# Takes a filename input by user, passes to process_file()
##
PROGRAMTITLE="Account Processing Shell Script (APS)"
echo $PROGRAMTITLE
echo -n "Please specify filename for processing: "
read FILENAME
if [ -r $FILENAME ] #check that the file exists and is readable
then
process_file $FILENAME
else
echo "Error reading file $FILENAME"
fi

Answer 2

Given the file format you specified, each record has three fields first last and amount, then:
i=0
while read fistname lastname amount; do
NAMEARRAY[$i]="$firstname $lastname"
SALARYARRAY[$i]=$amount
i = `expr $i + 1`
done < "$FILE"
The shell read built-in, automatically splits input. See the variable IFS in the man page for sh(1). If you have data after the amount field, and you wish to ignore it, just create another variable after amount; but don't use it. It will collect everything after the 1st 3 fields into the extra variable.
You specified Bourne shell, so I used some pretty antiquated stuff:
i=`expr $x + 1`
is usually written
let $((i++)) # ksh, bash (POSIX, Solaris, Linux)
On modern systems, /bin/sh is usually ksh or something pretty compatible. You can probably use let $((i++))