CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbash
User1
User1

Reputation: 41163

Parse input file into environment variables

I have a bash script that I want to read a settings files. Each line of the settings file has a special meaning for the rest of the script (eg line1=source_directory line2=destination_directory)

Is there an easy way to parse the settings file into environment variables I can use in the rest of the script?

Edit: I like the source idea but... I was originally going have a file like this:

/my/source/dir
/my/dest/dir

not:

src_dir=/my/source/dir
dst_dir=/my/dest/dir

Can I somehow parse the first file?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 504

Answers (3)

tripleee
tripleee

Reputation: 189317

If your file just has values, you don't really "parse" it.

exec 3<config
read source <&3
read dest <&3
exec 3<-

You might want to add some flags to read if your values may contain whitespace, etc. I should perhaps change the answer to have read -r but I encourage you to study the other available flags, too.

Upvotes: 0

Zombo
Zombo

Reputation: 1

You can source it

. foo.sh

this will allow you to use all the variables defined in foo.sh. You can also invoke using source keyword

source foo.sh

More info

source: source filename [arguments]

    Read and execute commands from FILENAME in the current shell.

Upvotes: 1

John Kugelman
John Kugelman

Reputation: 361565

A common trick is to source configuration files. On Red Hat systems, for instance, the system scripts in /etc/rc.d and /etc/sysconfig do this.

. /etc/prog.conf

This reads them as if they were scripts. This works great if the settings use name=value form and comments begin with #.

Caution: Make sure the configuration file is trusted since you're executing it like a script. It should be owned by the same user and group and have the same permissions as parent script.

Upvotes: 1

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