CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashscripting
user2163296
user2163296

Reputation: 35

While loop, username in /etc/passwd

How would I go about writing a while loop that says: While a username is in the /etc/passwd file, do (command)? I'm trying to use a command such as grep -q "^{usern}:" /etc/passwd but I'm not sure how to put that as the condition of the while loop.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1524

Answers (1)

dogbane
dogbane

Reputation: 274532

To loop over the users in /etc/passwd and do something with each user, try the following:

cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd | while IFS= read -r user
do
    echo "$user"
    # do something with $user
done

If you want to check whether a specific user exists in /etc/passwd and then do something, use an if-statement:

if grep -q "^username:" /etc/passwd
then
    # do something
fi

Upvotes: 3

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