Re: access nth argument list in a file

From: Ed Morton (morton_at_lsupcaemnt.com)
Date: 03/21/05 

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:28:30 -0600

zippy747 wrote:
> for include in ${includes}
> do
>
> done
>
> This accesses the last "includes" argument list in a file. How would i
> access the nth "includes" argument list in a file?
>
> i.e. the code above will iterate through "e f g h" but how do i
> iterate through "a b c d"?
>
> includes="a b c d"
> includes="e f g h"
>
> Thanks,
> -zip
>

If "file" contains

a b c d
e f g h

then this might be what you want:

while read includes
do
        for include in $includes
        do
                echo "$include"
        done
done < file

If you want to test for the Nth entry, just add a counter or use sed or
awk to pull out the Nth entry, e.g. in awk:

awk 'NR==7' file

would print the 7th line of "file".

If the above doesn't do what you want, describe what you want.

        Ed.