1
  • If a parameter is provided as an input, script should only check number of lines for that input file, otherwise script should display number of lines for each file within that directory.
  • The script file should be ignored i.e. the count for the script file should not be displayed.

I tried:

#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
        for l in *.txt
        do
                echo $(wc -l $l)
        done
else
        for l in $*
        do
                echo $(wc -l $l)
        done
fi

But I am not allowed to explicitly mention the file type i.e *.txt - it must check all files except script file.

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2
  • 1
    First of all, you don't need echo $(), just call wc directly Commented Jan 10, 2017 at 10:20
  • Second, use $0 variable to skip the script itself. Commented Jan 10, 2017 at 10:35

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
2

I think you almost got it. You can use basename "$0" to find the name of the script from within the script, and print the line count of everything except that

#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
    for k in *
    do
        if [[ ! -d "$k" && "$k" != `basename "$0"` ]]
        then
            wc -l "$k"
        fi
    done
else
    for k in $*
    do
         wc -l "$k"
    done
fi

I took the liberty of

  • Using k instead of l (not recommended for variable names I'm pretty sure although I can't find a link (it can be confused with 1, I))
  • Using 4 spaces for indentation instead of 8. In the end that is of course your decision, but I'd say 4 are more readable than 8.
  • Quoting your variables. Highly recommended to avoid splitting variable names with spaces.
  • Dropping the unnecessary echo like @Serg pointed out.

EDIT I added double brackets and a test for directories to ignore them as well to the if conditional.

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2
  • How do we ignore directories? Commented Jan 10, 2017 at 11:01
  • if [ ! -d "$k" ], -d stands for directory. I'll modify my answer. I needed to change it to double brackets to get this to work Commented Jan 10, 2017 at 11:07
0 
#!/bin/bash

if [[ "$#" != 0 ]]; then
  # only process the names given to us
  wc -l "$@"
  exit
fi

# process all regular files in this directory, avoiding this script
for f in ./*; do
    if [[ "$f" != "$0" ]] && [[ -f "$f" ]]; then
        wc -l "$f"
    fi
done
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0

Instead of a script you can also combine three (3) commands in one line and print the results that you want.
Eg.

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.txt" -exec cat {} + | wc -l

If you don't want to search only in the current directory, but also count the lines recursively, you can remove the "-maxdepth 1" switch or change the number based on your needs.

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