CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashvariablesloops
StevieHyperB
StevieHyperB

Reputation: 347

Bash - run command using lines from text file

I am a bit new to bash scripting and have not been able to find an answer for what I am about to ask, that is if it is possible.

I have a text file which is created by search a directory using grep for files containing "Name" and outputs the below, say the file is called PathOutput.txt

/mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/4c3483af-b41a-4979-98b7-6f6a4f147670/4c3483af-b41a-4979-98b7-6f6a4f147670.ovf

/mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/5b5538a5-423f-4eaf-9678-d377a6706c58/5b5538a5-423f-4eaf-9678-d377a6706c58.ovf

/mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/0e2d1451-45cc-456e-846d-d174515a60dd/0e2d1451-45cc-456e-846d-d174515a60dd.ovf

/mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/daaf622e-e035-4c1b-a6d7-8ee209c4ded6/daaf622e-e035-4c1b-a6d7-8ee209c4ded6.ovf

/mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/48f52ab9-64df-4b1e-9c35-c024ae2a64c4/48f52ab9-64df-4b1e-9c35-c024ae2a64c4.ovf

Now what I would like to do if possible is loop through the file with a command, using a variable to bring in each line in the text file. But I cannot work out a way to run the command againist each line. With all my playing around I did get a results where it would run once against the first line, but this was when the output of grep was piped into another command.

At the moment in a bash script I am just extracting the paths to PathOutput.txt, cat to display the paths, then copy the path I want to a read -p command to create a variable to run against a command. It works fine now, just have to run the script each time for each path. If I could get the command to loop through each line I could output the results to a txt file.

Is it possible?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3864

Answers (2)

Chris Seymour
Chris Seymour

Reputation: 85825

You could use xargs:

$ xargs -n1 echo "arg:" < file
arg: /mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/4c3483af-b41a-4979-98b7-6f6a4f147670/4c3483af-b41a-4979-98b7-6f6a4f147670.ovf
arg: /mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/5b5538a5-423f-4eaf-9678-d377a6706c58/5b5538a5-423f-4eaf-9678-d377a6706c58.ovf
arg: /mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/0e2d1451-45cc-456e-846d-d174515a60dd/0e2d1451-45cc-456e-846d-d174515a60dd.ovf
arg: /mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/daaf622e-e035-4c1b-a6d7-8ee209c4ded6/daaf622e-e035-4c1b-a6d7-8ee209c4ded6.ovf
arg: /mnt/volnfs3rvdata/4007dc45-477a-45b2-9c28-43bc5bbb4f9f/master/vms/48f52ab9-64df-4b1e-9c35-c024ae2a64c4/48f52ab9-64df-4b1e-9c35-c024ae2a64c4.ovf

Just replace echo "arg:" with the command you actually want to use. If you want to passed all the files at once drop the -n1 option.

Upvotes: 4

user570500
user570500

Reputation:

If I understand correctly, you may want something like this:

for L in `cat PathOutput.txt`; do
    echo "I read line $L from PathOutput.txt"
    # do something useful with $L
done

Upvotes: 2

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