Using a select loop with input from the 'file' command 2

[GirlInTrouble]

Hi everyone
My head is getting to know the brick wall rather well by now.
My problem is all do to do with passing a list of files using the file command into a select loop. Now I can make the file command give me what I think works because I hard coded it into 2nd script, it doesn’t look pretty because it (input) is split over a number of lines.

It may be something to do with the way commands are parsed (which I don’t know ANYTHING about) or my not accounting for how tabs are pasted


I've stripped most of the junk out and this is just part of a script that I'm trying to make work.
Anyhow I’ve tried using xargs and eval anyhow this is the closest I’ve got to what I want


#VER=$(file * |sed 's/^/"/'|sed 's/ //g'|sed 's/$/" /' |sed 's/\n//')

#echo $VER
PS3="Select your file: "
select x in $(file * |sed 's/^/"/'|sed 's/ //g'|sed 's/$/" /'|sed 's/\n//') Exit
#`echo $VER` Exit
do
case "$x" in
*) return;;
Exit) return;;
esac
done


This doesn’t give me what I want, what it does is that it works for anything that doesn’t have spaces In it and it actually codes the “ into the option text! I know I went overboard with the SED and it HAS been worse, I managed to get it to write the “\” in as shown below. Anyhow its just getting stupid – I just can’t think of anything else. Any ideas???????

I mean I know select works with whatever you supply with “abc: def“

This is the hard coded version with a subset of the data pasted in (is that the problem?):

PS3="Please select your file: "

select x in "try: commands text" "try10: commands text" "try11: commands text" "try11b: commands text" "try12: commands text" "try2: commands text" "try4: assembler program text" "try5: commands text" "try6: commands text" "try7: assembler program text" "try8: assembler program text" "try9: commands text" Exit
do
case "$x" in
*) return;;
Exit) return;;
esac
done

 

[PHV]

Something like this ?
[tt]PS3=$(echo "E) Exit\nSelect your file: ")
select x in $(file * | sed 's![ ][ ]*!_!g')
--v-- --v--
Tab Tab[/tt]

Hope This Help, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[toolkit]

I'm not sure how best to do this using ksh or sh only, but you can always rely on perl?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
@files = grep { -f } glob "*";
for ($i = 0; $i <= $#files; $i++) {
    printf "%2d) %s", $i, qx(file $files[$i]);
}
print "choose one: \n";

Cheers, Neil

 

[Ygor]

You could reset the internal field separator IFS, eg....

#!/usr/bin/ksh

IFS="
"
select x in $(file *)
do
  break
done
unset IFS

 

[toolkit]

Nice one Ygor

 

[PHV]

Very nice, Ygor.
A slight variation to avoid some side effect:
oldIFS="$IFS"
IFS="
"
select x in $(file * | pr -e -t)
do
break
done
IFS="$oldIFS"

Hope This Help, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[Ygor]

Cheers toolkit & PHV! High praise indeed!

PS. I guess that using "unset IFS" (to reset to default) only works for POSIX-compatable shells?

 

[GirlInTrouble]

Hi there and thanks to everyone who posted

Ok I tried all the ideas except the perl one (only bcos I haven't got to perl yet!)

Looks like you guys have cracked it, I was obviously making it TOO complicated. I havn't used the pr command much so will be checking out the man page in a sec to remind myself.
The solution which you all kicked in a piece has resulted in a beautifully formatted result without compromises (temp file) WOW.

I'm new to this forum but I like the atmosphere, so you may hear from from me again.

Thanks again