Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1318 mails)

["David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Brian K. White wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "suse" <opensuse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 10:51 PM
> Subject: [opensuse] BASH - while read; howto read last line in file without 
> blank line at end?
>
>
> > Listmates,
> >
> > I'm stumped on another simple BASH problem. How do I read the last line of a
> > file with a while loop without requiring a blank line at the end of the file?
> > Simple example I'm stuck on:
> >
> > { while read alias url; do
> > echo -e "${alias}\t${url}"
> > done } < ~/linux/scripts/config/repos
> >
> > The repos flat text file (shown with --- above and below to show no blank 
> > line
> > at the end) is:
>
> When read reaches end-of-file instead of end-of-line, it does read in the 
> data and assign it to the variables, but it exits with a non-zero status.
> If your loop is constructed "while read ;do stuff ;done <data"
> then the while command sees the non-zero exit and does not do stuff, exactly 
> as requested.
>
> So instead of testing the read exit status directly, test a flag, and have 
> the read command set that flag from within the loop body. That way regardless 
> of reads exit status, the entire loop body runs, because read was just one of 
> the list of commands in the loop like any other, not a deciding factor of if 
> the loop will get run at all.
>
> DONE=false
> until $DONE ;do
>   read || DONE=true
>   # process $REPLY here
> done < /path/to/file.in

Thanks Brian - I see light at the end of this tunnel.....

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
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