i'm trying to get working the following code:
searchfile="availables.txt"
read searchterm
grep_params="-i ^.*${searchterm}.*;.*$' $searchfile"
egrep $grep_params
which should echo all lines beginning with the $searchterm and followed by ";". But if the searchterm contains spaces it doesn't work (eg: "black eyed peas"), it gives me the following output:
egrep: eyed: No such file or directory
egrep: peas.*;.*$": No such file or directory
egrep: "availables.txt": No such file or directory
Just Bash
searchfile="file"
read searchterm
shopt -s nocasematch
while read -r line
do
case "$line" in
*"$searchterm"*";"* ) echo "$line";;
esac
done < "$searchfile"
You need to control word splitting here. That is done through arrays. See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/WordSplitting
searchfile="availables.txt"
read searchterm
grep_params=(-i "^.*${searchterm}.*;.*$" $searchfile)
egrep "${grep_params[@]}"
But don't use egrep - use grep -E instead, as the first is deprecated.
But I would have changed your code like that:
searchfile="availables.txt"
read searchterm
grep_params="^.*${searchterm}.*;.*$"
grep -E -i "$grep_params" $searchfile
.* when being asked for searchterm?.*$ in the grep_params, then it will match up to the ";"The code you're looking for is something like:
searchfile="availables.txt"
read searchterm
regex="${searchterm}"'.*;'
egrep "${grep_params}" "${searchfile}"
Note that I simplified your regex (I hope I got it right!).
However, as Ignacio Vazquez-Abrar noted, this will fail in complex cases.
As this is s regex, try to replace the " " with \s. This stands for a whitespace character.
"black\seyed\speas"
Alternative way is to pass the params through xargs:
searchfile="availables.txt"
read searchterm
grep_params="-i '^.*${searchterm}.*;.*$' $searchfile"
echo "$grep_params" | xargs egrep
I got here by searching for "bash variable in a regex"
I solved it by changing the regex delimiters from "/" to "+"
Even though it has nothing to do with egrep, I'm adding my solution for other people who arrive from similar searches:
SYBASELOG="/opt/sybase/ASE-12_5/install/SYBASE.log"
MAILBODY="Some text and then the replacement placeholder:
[MSGFILE]
and some more text"
# Some proecessing...
MAILBODY=`echo "${MAILBODY}" | sed -e "s+\[MSGFILE\]+"${SYBASELOG}"+"`
And yes, I see now that it had little to do with bash and everything to do with the slashes in the log file variable. D'oh!
