2

I am trying to create a bash script that will manage a basic inventory system for a friend. Everything he wants to inventory has a barcode, that when scanned, returns a 6 digit number (EX. 000001). I have a piece of code that is supposed to take any input, call it $current, then find $current in data.txt and delete the line. When i am done entering codes, i enter 0 to stop

I couldnt get sed to replace the text in the file directly, so i had it copy to a different file, overwrite the original, then delete the copy. Whenever i run this piece of the file though, it freezes at the sed command and stops running, i can type whatever i want and it wont do anything, including the exit command "0".

read current
until [ $current -eq 0 ]
do
   sed '0,/$current/{/$current/d;}' >> data1.txt
   cp data1.txt data.txt
   rm data1.txt
   read current
done
dessert
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Tech_Person
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2 Answers2

2

You didn’t give sed any input, so it’s waiting for it on stdin. You probably want to edit data.txt in place:

sed -i "0,/$current/{/$current/d;}" data.txt

This saves you the cp and rm calls. Note that I used double quotes for the expression, variables are not expanded in single quotes.

dessert
  • 39,982
1

Note that variable interpolation into a sed script is never a good idea. Should someone enter .*, your script would delete all lines. Should someone enter /, sed will output an error. It is a very fragile approach.

To delete the first line containing a certain string, I suggest using awk and its index function:

awk -i inplace 'index($0,c)&&!f{f=1;next}1' c="$current" file

Test run:

$ cat file
aaa / ccc
/ eee fff

$ current=/

$ awk 'index($0,c)&&!f{f=1;next}1' c="$current" file
/ eee fff

$ sed "0,/$current/{/$current/d;}" file
sed: -e expression #1, char 5: unknown command: `/'
PesaThe
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