BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Prac_1 Check the output of the following commands:

date, ls, who, cal, ps, wc, cat, uname, pwd, mkdir, rmdir, cd, cp, rm, mv, diff,
chmod, grep, sed, head, tail,cut, paste, sort, find, man

Prac_2 Write a script to find the complete path for any file.

clear
echo "Enter File Name : \c "
read fileName

if [ -f $fileName ]
then
str=`find $fileName`
path=`pwd`
echo "Full path of file is $path/$str"

else
echo "file [ $fileName ] not exist in \c "
pwd
fi

What is the pwd command example?

Simply type pwd into your terminal, and the command will output the absolute path of
your present working directory. In this example, the command has indicated that our
present working directory is

Find
Find command is use for find the file

[Type text] Page 1

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Prac_3 Write a shell script to execute following command

echo sorting the file

sort abc.txt > xyz.txt

echo executing two commands

who ; ls

echo -e " this is \n a three-line \n Text message "# use -e option if required

echo The version is `uname -a`

echo Help of cat command

note:

in above program create two file abc.txt xyz.txt

using cat > abc.txt

cat > xyz.txt

save with ctr+z

[Type text] Page 2

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Prac_4 Write a shell script to execute following command

echo 1. How would u display the hidden files

echo 2. How delete directory with files
echo 3. How would user can do interactive copying
echo 4. How would user can do interactive deletion of files
echo 5. Explain two functionalities of mv command with example
echo enter your choice
read ch
case $ch in
1) echo Displaying hidden files
ls .[a-z]* ;;
2) echo Deleting directories with files
rm -R abc.txt ;;
3) echo Interactive copy
cp -i a.txt xyz.txt ;; # file2 should be created first to check interactivity
4) echo Interactive Deletion
rm -i x.txt ;;
5) echo mv command
mv xyz.txt x.txt ;;
*) echo Invalid choice ;;
esac

[Type text] Page 3

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

5 Write a shell script to execute following commands

1. Create a file called text and store name, age and address in it.

2. Display the contents of the file text on the screen.

3. Delete the directories mydir and newdir at one shot.

4. Sort a numeric file?

5. Change the permissions for the file newtext to 666.

echo “1. Create a file called text and store name, age and address in it.”

echo “2. Display the contents of the file text on the screen.”

echo “3. Delete the directories mydir and newdir at one shot.”

echo “4. Sort a numeric file”

echo “5. Change the permissions for the file newtext to 666.”

echo “enter your choice”

read ch

case $ch in

1) echo “Create a file called text and store name,age and address in it.”

echo “Enter the filename”

read fn

cat > $fn ;;

2) echo “Display the contents of the file text on the screen.”

cat $fn ;;

3) echo “Delete the directories mydir and newdir at one shot.”

rmdir mydir newdir ;;

4) echo “Sort a numeric file”

sort -n filename ;;

[Type text] Page 4

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

5) echo “Change the permissions for the file newtext to 666.”

chmod 666 newtext ;;

*) echo “Invalid choice” ;;

esac

Pra-6: Write shell script that accept filename and displays last modification
time if file exists.

echo "enter filename"

read fn
if [ -e $fn ]
then
ls -l $fn | cut -d " " -f 23
else
echo "file does not exit"
fi

NOTE
ls -l $fn | cut -d " " -f 23

here ls-l display in detail list

[Type text] Page 5

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Cut -d [Delimiter]

Use for extract field from a list/file.

-f 23 use for particular field and which line you want to see.

Other example

Extracting field from file

Remember, in order to extract a field from a file, we would need a delimiter (i.e. a
column separator), based on which the file will be divided into columns and we
can extract any of them. In this case, the syntax would be-

cut -d [DELIMITER] -f [RANGE] [FILENAME]

[Type text] Page 6

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Here, we are instructing cut command to use a particular delimiter with option -
d and then extract certain fields using option -f.

1. Display a specific field from a file

In case of a csv file, it is crystal clear that our delimiter will be a comma (,). Now,
we need to enlist the names of the employees working in our organization, i.e. field
number 2.

Example:

$ cut -d ',' -f 2 employees.txt

Employee Name
John Davies
Mary Fernandes
Jacob Williams
Sean Anderson
Nick Jones
Diana Richardson

2. Displaying Multiple Fields from a File

Moving forward now, let‟s display more than one field now. Suppose, we need to
include 'Age' and 'Gender' fields also. For this, we must specify the range - again, a
start and an end.

$ cut -d ',' -f 2-4 employees.txt

Employee Name, Age, Gender
John Davies, 35, M
Mary Fernandes, 29, F
Jacob Williams, 40, M
Sean Anderson, 25, M
Nick Jones, 42, M
Diana Richardson, 29, F

7 Write a shell script to display the login names that begin with „s‟.

who | grep ^s

[Type text] Page 7

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

8 Write a shell script to remove the zero sized file from the current directory

for i in *

do

if [ ! -s $i ]

then

rm $i

echo " $i removed "

fi

done

9 Write a shell script to display the name of all the executable file from the current
directory.

countx=0
for i in *
do
if [ -x $i ]
then
countx=`expr $countx + 1`
fi
done
echo Number of executable files are $countx

[Type text] Page 8

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

10. Write a shell script that will display welcome message according to time

d=`date +"%H"`
if [ $d -lt 12 ]
then
echo Good Morning
elif [ $d -gt 12 -a $d -lt 14 ]
then
echo good afternoon
else
echo good night
fi

Note

Here date command display date

[admin.DESKTOP-9HF8OPQ] $ date
Tue Jan 18 13:10:40 IST 2022

NAME
date - print or set the system date and time

SYNOPSIS
date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

[Type text] Page 9

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

11. Write a shell script to find number of ordinary files and directory
files

countd=0
countf=0
for i in *
do
if [ -d $i ]
then
countd=`expr $countd + 1`
fi
if [ -f $i ]
[Type text] Page 10
BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

then
countf=`expr $countf + 1`
fi
done
echo Number of directories are $countd
echo Number of Ordinary files are $countf

12 Write a shell script that takes a filename from the command line and checks
whether the file is an ordinary file or not.

 If it is an ordinary file then it should display the contents of the file.

 If it is not an ordinary file then script should display the message: “File does
not exist or is not ordinary, cannot display.

echo "enter filename"

read $1
if [ -f $1 ]
then
echo Its an ordinary file
else
echo File does not exist or is not ordinary file
fi

13 Write a shell script that takes a filename from the user and
checks whether it is a directory file or not.
echo enter the filename
read fn
if [ -f $fn ]
then
echo Its a directory ls $fn
else
echo Its not a directory

[Type text] Page 11

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

fi

Note

-f is used for file

-d used for directory

14 Write a shell script that takes a filename as an argument

and checks if the file exists and is executable.
echo enter file name
read fn
if [ -e $fn -a -x $fn ]
then
echo file exists and is executable
else
echo file does not exist or is not executable
fi

Note

-e $fn -a -x $fn

-e used for exist

$fn used for file name

-a means and

-x means executable

[Type text] Page 12

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

15 Write a shell script that displays all subdirectories in current working

directory.

echo List of Directories

for i in *
do
if [ -d $i ]
then
echo $i
fi
done

output

[Type text] Page 13

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

16 Write a shell script that calculates the number of ordinary and

directory files in your current working directory.

countd=0
countf=0
for i in *
do
if [ -d $i ]
then
countd=`expr $countd + 1`
fi
if [ -f $i ]
then
countf=`expr $countf + 1`
fi
done
echo Number of directories are $countd
echo Number of Ordinary files are $countf

17 Write a shell script that accepts 2 filenames and checks if both exists; if both
exist then append the content of the second file into the first file

echo enter the first filename

read fn1
echo enter the second filename
read fn2
if [ -f $fn1 -a -f $fn2 ]
then
echo Both file exists
cat $fn2 >> $fn1
else
echo Files does not exist
fi

[Type text] Page 14

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Note:

In above program create two file

You can also contain copies to new file using follow command .in below command
we merge two file and contain display new file.

[Type text] Page 15

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

18 Write a shell script that takes the name of two files as arguments and
performs the following:
i. Displays the message : “Displaying the contents of file :( first argument)” and displays
the contents page wise.
ii. ii. Copies the contents of the first argument to second argument.
iii. iii. Finally displays the message: “File copied successfully.”3

echo enter file name

read n
echo enter copy file name
read file
echo Displaying the contents of file $n
cat $n
echo Displaying the contents page wise
cat $n | more

[Type text] Page 16

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

echo Copying the files

cp $n $file
c=`echo $?`
if [ $c -eq 0 ]
then
echo File copied successfully
else
echo Files not copied successfully
fi

Note:

Echo $?

Echoes (prints) the exit value for the previous command. If it failed it will be
different than zero ( 0 ). $ cd ~ $ echo $? > 0 $ cd //whatever/ > bash: cd:
//whatever/: No such file or directory $ echo $? > 1. Programs exit with a status
code.

[Type text] Page 17

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

19 Write a shell script to display the following menu and acts accordingly:

i. Calendar of the current month and year.

ii. Display “Good Morning/Good Afternoon/Good Evening” according tothe
current login time.
iii. User name, Users home directory.
iv. Terminal name, Terminal type.
v. Machine name.
vi. No. of users who are currently logged in; List of users who are currently
logged in.

echo 1. Calendar of the current month and year.

echo 2. Display Good Morning/Good Afternoon/Good Evening according to the
current login time.
echo 3. User name, Users home directory.
echo 4. Terminal name, Terminal type.
echo 5 Machine name.
echo 6. No. of users who are currently logged in List of users who are currently
logged in.
echo enter your choice
read ch
case $ch in
1) echo Calendar of current month is
cal ;;
2) d=`date +"%H"`

[Type text] Page 18

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

if [ $d -lt 12 ]
then
echo Good Morning
elif [ $d -gt 12 -a $d -lt 16 ]
then
echo Good Afternoon
else
echo Good Evening
fi
;;
3) echo Username is $USER
echo Users Home directory is $HOME ;;
4) echo Terminal details
tty;;
5) echo Machine name is
uname -m ;;
6) echo The number of users logged in are
who | wc -l
*) echo Invalid choice
esac

20 Write a shell script that displays the following menu and acts accordingly

1. Concatenates two strings

2. Renames a file

3. Deletes a file.

4. Copy the file to specific location

echo 1. Concatenates two strings

echo 2. Renames a file
echo 3. Deletes a file.
echo 4. Copy the file to specific location
echo enter your choice
read ch

[Type text] Page 19

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

case $ch in
1) echo enter first string
read str1
echo enter second string
read str2
echo The concated strings are $str1$str2 ;;
2) echo enter the old filename
read ofn
echo enter the new filename
read nfn
mv $ofn $nfn
echo file renamed ;;
3) echo enter the filename
read fn
rm $fn
echo file deleted ;;
4) echo enter the filename
read fn
cp $fn \usr\home\dir\$fn #you can change the specific path
echo file copied ;;
*) echo invalid choice ;;
esac

21 Write a shell script to change the suffix of all your *.txt

files to .dat.

for file in *.txt

do
echo ${file%.*}.doc;
done

[Type text] Page 20

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

22 Write a shell script to accept a directory-name and display its

contents. If input is not given then HOME directory's contents should
be listed. (Make use of command line argument)

if [ $# ]

then

ls $1

else

ls $HOME

fi

$# : Stands for counts of the number of the positional parameters passed to a

script. example test.sh 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 , there are 7 parameters as passed so the count
of the $# is

$0 is the name of the script itself (script.sh) $1 is the first argument

(filename1) $2 is the second argument (dir1) $9 is the ninth argument.

23 Write a shell script to get all files of home directory and rename
them if their names start with c.

Newname = oldname111

[BCA-1.BCA-1-PC] $ ls |grep "^c"

c.txt
city.txt

[Type text] Page 21

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

24 Write a shell script that takes two filename as arguments. It should check
whether the contents of two files are same or not, if they are same then second
file should be deleted.
echo enter the first filename

read fn1

echo enter the second filename

read fn2

cmp $fn1 $fn2

c=`echo $?`

if [ $c -eq 0 ]

then

echo both files are same

rm $fn2

else

echo both files are not same

fi

25 Write a shell script that accepts two directory names from the command
line and copies

all the files of one directory to another. The script should do the following

• If the source directory does not exist, flash a error message

• If destination directory does not exist create it

• Once both exist copy all the files from source directory to

[Type text] Page 22

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

destination directory

if [ -d $1 -a -d $2 ]
then
cp -R $1 $2

else
mkdir $2
echo "Directory created $2"
cp -R $1 $2

fi

26 Write a shell script that displays the following menu

• List home directory

• Date

• Print working directory

• Users logged in

Read the proper choice. Execute corresponding command. Check for invalid
choice.

echo 1.List home directory

echo 2.Date

echo 3. Print working directory

echo 4. Users logged in

[Type text] Page 23

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

echo enter your choice

read ch

case $ch in

1) echo Home directory is $HOME ;;

2) echo Todays date is `date` ;;

3) echo Present working directory is `pwd` ;;

4) echo No of users logged in are

who | wc -l ;;

*) echo Invalid choice ;;

esac

27 Write a shell script that displays all hidden files in current directory.

ls .[a-z]*

28 Write a shell script that Combine two files in the third file horizontally and
vertically.
echo enter the first filename

read fn1

echo enter the second filename

read fn2

echo Combining two files horizontally

cat $fn2 >> $fn1

[Type text] Page 24

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

echo Combining two files vertically

paste $fn1 $fn2

note
1. Pasting columns

In its most basic use case, the paste command takes N input files and joins them line by line on
the output:

sh$ printf "%s\n" {a..e} | tee letters

a
b
c
d
e

sh$ printf "%s\n" {1..5} | tee digits

1
2
3
4
5

sh$ paste letters digits

a 1
b 2
c 3
d 4
e 5

paste –s vertical represent

abcde
12345

[Type text] Page 25

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

29 Write a shell script to delete all the spaces from a given file.

echo enter the filename

read datafile

cat $datafile | tr -d '[:space:]' > newfile

echo enter the filename

read datafile

cat $datafile | tr -d '[:r:]' > newfile

30 Write a shell script to find a given date fall on a weekday or a weekend.

d=`date +"%u"`
if [ $d -eq 7 ]
then
echo "it is weekend"
else
echo "it is a weekday"
fi

[Type text] Page 26

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

31 Write a shell script to search for a given word in all the files given as the
arguments on the command line.

echo "Enter the word"

read w
for i in $@
do
grep $w $i
done

32 Write a shell script that display last modified file in the current directory.

ls -lt | head -2 | tail -1

33 Write a script to display the permissions of the particular file.

echo enter the filename

read fn

ls -l $fn | cut -c 2-10

Cut Command in Unix with Examples

The cut command extracts a given number of characters or columns from a file.
For cutting a certain number of columns it is important to specify the delimiter. A
delimiter specifies how the columns are separated in a text file

Example: Number of spaces, tabs or other special characters.

Syntax:
cut [options] [file]

[Type text] Page 27

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

The cut command supports a number of options for processing different record
formats. For fixed width fields, the -c option is used.

$ cut -c 5-10 file1

This command will extract characters 5 to 10 from each line.

For delimiter separated fields, the -d option is used. The default delimiter is the tab character.

$ cut -d “,” -f 2,6 file1

This command will extract the second and sixth field from each line, using the „,‟ character as
the delimiter.

Example:

Assume the contents of the data.txt file are:

Employee_id;Employee_name;Department_name;Salary
10001;Employee1;Electrical;20000
10002; Employee2; Mechanical;30000
10003;Employee3;Electrical;25000
10004; Employee4; Civil;40000

And the following command is run on this file:

$ cut -c 5 data.txt

The output will be:

o
1
2
3
4
If the following command is run on the original file:
$ cut -c 7-15 data.txt

The output will be:

ee_id; Emp

Employee1

Employee2

Employee3

[Type text] Page 28

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Employee4

If the following command is run on the original file:

$ cut -d “,” -f 1-3 data.txt

The output will be:

Employee_id;Employee_name;Department_name

10001;Employee1;Electrical

10002; Employee2; Mechanical

10003;Employee3;Electrical

10004; Employee4; Civil

35,37- Write a shell script to display the following menu for a particular file:
echo 1. Display all the words of a file in ascending order.

echo 2. Display a file in descending order.

echo 3. Toggle all the characters in the file.

echo 4. Display type of the file.

echo enter your choice

read ch

echo enter the filename

read fn

case $ch in

1) sort $fn ;;
[Type text] Page 29
BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

2) sort -r $fn ;;

3) cat $fn | tr [a-z] [A-Z] ;;

4) file $fn ;;

*) echo invalid choice

Note: Ascending order command is sort

Descending order command is sort-r
Toggle all character(capital all letter) tr [a-z][A-Z][a-z]

tr (short for translate) is a useful command line utility that translates and/or
deletes characters from stdin input, and writes to stdout. It is a useful program for
manipulating text on the command line.

[Type text] Page 30

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

$ cat linux.txt

linux is my life
linux has changed my life
linux is best and everthing to me..:)

$ cat domains.txt | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]

LINUX IS MY LIFE
LINUX HAS CHANGED MY LIFE
LINUX IS BEST AND EVERTHING TO ME..:)

2. Alternatively, you can use the following command to change all lower case
letters to upper case in a file as shown.

$ cat linux.txt | tr [a-z] [A-Z]

LINUX IS MY LIFE
LINUX HAS CHANGED MY LIFE
LINUX IS BEST AND EVERTHING TO ME..:)

3. To save the results written to stdout in a file for later processing, use the
shell’s output redirection feature (>) as shown.

$ cat linux.txt | tr [a-z] [A-Z] >output.txt

$ cat output.txt

LINUX IS MY LIFE
LINUX HAS CHANGED MY LIFE
LINUX IS BEST AND EVERTHING TO ME..:)

[Type text] Page 31

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

4. In regards to the redirection, you can send input to tr using the input
redirection and redirect the output to a file using the same command, as shown.

$ tr [a-z] [A-Z] < linux.txt >output.txt

5. Another useful feature is, you can use the -d flag to delete characters, for
example to remove the spaces in the domain names using the following
command.

$ cat domains.txt

www. tecmint. com

www. fossmint. com
www. linuxsay. com
$ cat domains.txt | tr -d ''

www.tecmint.com
www.fossmint.com
www.linuxsay.com

6. If there are repeated characters in a sequence (for instance double spaces) in

the text you are processing, you can use the -s option to squeeze the characters
leaving only one occurrence of it.

$ cat domains.txt

www.tecmint.....com
www.fossmint.com
www.linuxsay.com
$ cat domains.txt | tr -s ''

www.tecmint.com
www.fossmint.com
www.linuxsay.com

[Type text] Page 32

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

7. The -c option tells tr to use the complement in the given of SET. In this
example, we want to delete all the letters and only leave the UID.

$ echo "My UID is $UID" | tr -cd "[:digit:]\n"

OR
$ echo "My UID is $UID" | tr -d "a-zA-Z"

8. Here is an example of breaking a single line of words (sentence) into multiple

lines, where each word appears in a separate line.

$ echo "My UID is $UID"

My UID is 1000

$ echo "My UID is $UID" | tr " " "\n"

My
UID
is
1000

9. Related to the previous example, you can also translate multiple lines of words
into a single sentence as shown.

$ cat uid.txt

My
UID
is
1000

$ tr "\n" " " < uid.txt

My UID is 1000

[Type text] Page 33

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

10. It is also possible to translate just a single character, for instance a space into
a “ : ” character, as follows.

$ echo "Tecmint.com =>Linux-HowTos,Guides,Tutorials" | tr "

" ":"

Tecmint.com:=>Linux-HowTos,Guides,Tutorials

There are several sequence characters you can use with tr, for more information,
see the tr man page.

$ man tr

36 Write a shell script to check whether the named user is currently logged in
or not.

echo “enter the username”

read un

c=`who | grep -c $un`

if [ $c -gt 0 ]

then

echo “User is currently logged in ”

else

echo “User is not currently logged in”

fi

[Type text] Page 34

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

38 Write a shell script to find total no. Of users and finds out how many of
them are

currently logged in.

echo “The number of users in the system are”

cat etc/passwd | wc -l

echo “The number of uses currently logged in are “

who | wc -l

39 Write a shell script that displays the directory information in the following
format-

Filename Size Date Protection Owner

echo Enter the filename

read fn

echo Filename Size Date Protection Owner

echo `ls -l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f23` ` ls -l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f5` `ls
-l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f20,` `ls -l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f1` `ls -l $fn |
cut -d ' ' -f10`
40 Write a shell script to display five largest files from the current directory

ls -ls | head -1 | tail -1

Or
ls –l | tail -1

[Type text] Page 35

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

or
ls- lt | head -2

or
ls -lt

$ ls -lt
total 5
-rw-r--r-- 1 BCA-1 Domain U 104 Mar 14 09:15 m.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 BCA-1 Domain U 21 Mar 14 08:56 city.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 BCA-1 Domain U 611 Mar 14 08:40 t.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 BCA-1 Domain U 27 Mar 14 08:12 names
-rw-r--r-- 1 BCA-1 Domain U 27 Mar 14 08:08 c.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 BCA-1 Domain U 106 Mar 14 07:55 a.txt
lrwxrwxrwx 1 BCA-1 Domain U 29 Mar 14 07:51 Desktop ->
/drives/C/Users/BCA-1/Desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 1 BCA-1 Domain U 7 Mar 14 07:51 Drives -> /drives
lrwxrwxrwx 1 BCA-1 Domain U 30 Mar 14 07:51 LauncherFolder ->
/drives/C/Users/BCA-1/Desktop/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 BCA-1 Domain U 31 Mar 14 07:51 MyDocuments ->
/drives/C/Users/BCA-1/Documents

[BCA-1.BCA-1-PC] $ ls -lt |tail -1

lrwxrwxrwx 1 BCA-1 Domain U 31 Mar 14 07:51 MyDocuments ->
/drives/C/Users/BCA-1/Documents

[BCA-1.BCA-1-PC] $ ls -lt |head -2

total 5
-rw-r--r-- 1 BCA-1 Domain U 104 Mar 14 09:15 m.sh

The head Command

The syntax of the head command is pretty straightforward:
head [OPTIONS] FILES

[Type text] Page 36

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

Let‟s prepare a file (numbers_en.txt) as the input example to understand the command
better:
$ cat numbers_en.txt
one : 1
two : 2
three : 3
four : 4
...
ninety-seven : 97
ninety-eight : 98
ninety-nine : 99
one hundred : 100
The file contains English words of numbers from 1 to 100. Thus, the file has 100
lines.
The head command will, by default, write the first ten lines of the input file to the
standard output:

$ head numbers_en.txt
one : 1
two : 2
three : 3
four : 4
five : 5
six : 6
seven : 7
eight : 8
nine : 9
ten : 10

Output a Specific Number of Lines

With the -n option, we can let the head command output the first n lines instead
of the default 10.
For example, if we want to have the first seven lines printed to standard out, we‟d
use -n 7:
$ head -n 7 numbers_en.txt
one : 1
two : 2
three : 3
four : 4
five : 5
six : 6
seven : 7
If we pass the -n option together with a number following the –, for example -n -
x, the head command will print all lines but the last x lines of the file.
[Type text] Page 37
BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

For instance, if we want to ignore the last 97 lines from the file, we‟d do -n -97:
$ head -n -97 numbers_en.txt
one : 1
two : 2
three : 3

The tail Command

The syntax of using the tail command is quite straightforward, too:
tail [OPTIONS] FILES
The tail command will by default write the last ten lines of the input file to the
standard output:
$ tail numbers_en.txt
ninety-one : 91
ninety-two : 92
ninety-three : 93
ninety-four : 94
ninety-five : 95
ninety-six : 96
ninety-seven : 97
ninety-eight : 98
ninety-nine : 99
one hundred : 100

Output a Specific Number of Lines

With the -n option, we can let the tail command output the last n lines instead of
the default 10.
This example shows how to get the last seven lines from the input file:
$ tail -n 7 numbers_en.txt
ninety-four : 94
ninety-five : 95
ninety-six : 96
ninety-seven : 97
ninety-eight : 98
ninety-nine : 99
one hundred : 100
If we pass the -n option together with a number following the “+”, for example “-
n +x”, the tail command will print starting with the x-th line till the end of the
file.
Let‟s print from 95th line till the end of the numbers_en.txt file:

[Type text] Page 38

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

$ tail -n +95 numbers_en.txt

ninety-five : 95
ninety-six : 96
ninety-seven : 97
ninety-eight : 98
ninety-nine : 99
one hundred : 100

Output a Specific Number of Bytes

Similar to the head command, if we pass -c x option to the tail command, it will
output only the last x bytes from the input file.
Let‟s get the last number 100 from the input file:
$ tail -c 4 numbers_en.txt
100

41 Write a shell script that toggles contents of the file

echo “Enter the filename”

read fn

cat $fn | tr [a-z] [A-Z] ;;

42 Write a shell script that report whether your friend has currently logged in
or not.
If he has logged in then shell script should send a message to his terminal
suggesting a dinner tonight. If you do have write permission to his terminal
suggesting a dinner tonight. If you do have write permission to his terminal or
if he hasn’t logged in then such a message should be mailed to him about your
dinner proposal.

echo “Enter the username”

read un

c=`who | grep -c $un`

[Type text] Page 39

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

if [ $c -gt 0 ]

then

echo “User is currently logged in ”

else

echo “User is not currently logged in”

fi

44 Write a shell script to accept any character using command line and list all
the files

starting with that character in the current directory

ls | grep ^$1

[BCA-1.BCA-1-PC] $ sh g.sh c
c.txt
city.txt

45 Create a file called student containing roll-no, name and marks.

a. Display the contents of the file sorted by marks in descending order

b. Display the names of students in alphabetical order ignoring the case.

c. Display students according to their roll nos.

d. Sort file according to the second field and save it to file „names‟.

e. Display the list of students who scored between 70 and 80.

echo 1. Display the contents of the file sorted by marks in descending order
echo 2. Display the names of students in alphabetical order ignoring the case.

[Type text] Page 40

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

echo 3. Display students according to their roll nos.

echo 4. Sort file according to the second field and save it to file names.
echo 5. Display the list of students who scored between 70 and 80
echo enter filename
read fn
echo enter your choice
read ch
case $ch in

1) sort -k3 -r $fn ;;

2) sort -k2 -i $fn ;;
3) sort $fn ;;
4) sort -k2 $fn > names ;;
5) awk '{ if ( $3 >=70 && $3 <=80 ) print $3 }' $fn ;;
*) echo Invalid Choice ;;

esac

The basic function of awk is to search files for lines (or other units of text)
that contain certain patterns. When a lie matches one of the

patterns, awk performs specified actions on that line. awk keeps processing
input lines in this way until it reaches the end of the input files.

Programs in awk are different from programs in most other languages,

because awk programs are data-driven; that is, you describe the data you
want to work with and then what to do when you find it. Most other
languages are procedural; you have to describe, in great detail, every step the
program is to take. When working with procedural languages, it is usually
much harder to clearly describe the data your program will process. For this
reason, awk programs are often refreshingly easy to read and write.

When you run awk, you specify an awk program that tells awk what to do.
The program consists of a series of rules. (It may also contain function

[Type text] Page 41

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

definitions, an advanced feature that we will ignore for now. See the Section
8.2 in Chapter 8.) Each rule specifies one pattern to search for and one action
to perform upon finding the pattern.

Syntactically, a rule consists of a pattern followed by an action. The action is

enclosed in curly braces to separate it from the pattern. Newlines usually
separate rules. Therefore, an awk program looks like this:

pattern { action }
pattern { action }
...

1001 John sena 40000

1002 Jafar Iqbal 60000
1003 Meher Nigar 30000
1004 Jonny Liver 70000

The following awk command will read data from employee.txt file line by line
and print the first filed after formatting. Here, “%10s\n” means that the output
will be 10 characters long. If the value of the output is less than 10 characters
then the spaces will be added at the front of the value.
$ awk '{ printf "%10s\n", $1 }' employee.txt

Output

Simple if example:
he following command will read the content of the items.txt file and check
the 3rd field value in each line. If the value is empty then it will print an error
message with the line number.
$ awk '{ if ($3 == "") print "Price field is missing in line " NR }' items.txt

[Type text] Page 42

BCA sem-6 Shell Script Rita vadhvana

if-else example:
The following command will print the item price if the 3rd field exists in the line,
otherwise, it will print an error message.
$ awk '{ if ($3 == "") print "Price field is missing"
else print "item price is " $3 }' items.txt

if-else-if example:

When the following command will execute from the terminal then it will take
input from the user. The input value will be compared with each if condition
until the condition is true. If any condition becomes true then it will print the
corresponding grade. If the input value does not match with any condition then
it will print fail.

$ awk 'BEGIN { print "Enter the mark:"

getline mark < "-"
if (mark >= 90) print "A+"
else if( mark >= 80) print "A"
else if( mark >= 70) print "B+"
else print "Fail" }'

[Type text] Page 43