awk for a specific word and only that word 1

[sunixadm]

Hi,

I'm sure that I'm making this harder than it really is and would appreciate any help.

I have written a script that reports the size of home directories and compares the information to previously collected data.

I am using awk to find the user in a list containing the directory size and the users name:

11096 admin
23456 bsmith
27869 jhart
223 bak-admin
7789 kbasmith

So, when I grep (/usr/bin/grep on Solaris 8) for admin I get the output for both bak-admin and admin.

This isn't the actual list of users (directories) but represents our naming convention for user home directories.
Below is an example of what I am doing in my script and what I am getting as out put:

#!/bin/sh
oldlist=list.old
user=`awk '{ print $2 }' $oldlist`
echo $user
oldsize=`for i in $user
do
grep "\<$i\>" $oldlist | awk '{ print \$1 }'
done`
echo $oldsize

The contents list.old is:

11096 admin
23456 bsmith
27869 jhart
223 bak-admin
7789 kbasmith

Running the script results in following output:

admin bsmith jhart bak-admin kbasmith lost+found
11096 223 23456 27869 223 7789 2234

As you can see the script is reporting the "$oldsize" for admin is reported as 11096 and 223.
This is wrong and causes problems with the rest of my script.

I have also tried /usr/xpg4/bin/grep -E and /usr/xpg4/bin/grep -F -x but neither are the correct solution.

Thanks in advance.

-Joe

 

[CaKiwi]

This awk script is untested but may get you started

awk -f sunixadm.awk list.old

#sunixadm.awk
{
printf $2 " "
a[++n] = $1
}
END {
print ""
for (j=1;j<=n;j++) printf a[j] " "
print ""
}

CaKiwi

 

[sunixadm]

CaKiwi,

Thanks for your quick response. It's exactly what I needed!

-Joe

 

[sibawe]

Hello,

The simplest is to add a space before $i in your grep:

=> grep " \<$i\>" instead of grep "\<$i\>" .

It works but isn't too elegant.

Your problem is that grep "admin" returns 2 lines.
grep -w doesn't seem too helpful. Special regexps in egrep should do. But here again nothing seems as staight forward as adding the space. A word of caution: don't forget to add a debug remark in your script saying you added a space in the command. spaces are always pretty tricky when you start debugging.
Cheers,
Sibawe