CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshell
newprogrammerha
newprogrammerha

Reputation: 49

how to get a name from a line in bash?

I am writing a script that accepts someone's id, and the script should print this person's name! now the problem I have is that the name is unknown!

in the directory I am in right now I have a file and in this file there are lines and each line is in the following format :

id_number(from 6 digits) name(can be in any length and can include number at the end) number_of_brothers(positive number between 0-10) more_random numbers(from 6 digits too but this is optional which means it might not be any number in here )

the name can include a number at the end and also after the name, there must be a number that resembles the number of brothers, and after that, it is optional the line include numbers of id after the number of a brother ( whereas I said the number od is contained 6 digits) (also there could be spaces in the start of the line and at least one space between every two numbers or names) for example:

234218 Dan Simon 1 3 234122 234118 104134

(here the name i want to get is "Dan simon 1")

another example:

236501 chris brown singer 3

(the name I want to get here is "chris brown singer" )

my problem is how o get the name ! because the name could include a lot of words and also a number!

I started by getting rid of the extra spaces in the line and done grep to get the line that includes the correct id 

#!/bin/bash

line = `grep ^$1 names_file`
correct_line=`echo $line`

Upvotes: 0

Views: 317

Answers (2)

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785481

Input file:

cat file
234218 Dan simon 1 3 234122 234118 104134
236501 chris brown singer 3
123456 John Right 2nd 5

Here is pure bash regex solution:

re='^[0-9]{6} +([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9 ]*) +[0-9]{1,2}( +[0-9]{6,})*$'

while IFS= read -r line; do [[ $line =~ $re ]] && echo "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"; done < file

Dan simon 1
chris brown singer
John Right 2nd

Using gnu grep:

grep -oP '^\d{6,}\s+\K[\w\s]+?(?=\s+\d{1,2}(?:\s+\d{6,})*$)' file    
Dan simon 1
chris brown singer
John Right 2nd

Details:

  • ^\d{6,}\s+: Match 6+ digits followed by 1+ whitespace at the start
  • \K: Reset the match
  • [\w\s]+?: Match 1+ word or space characters
  • (?=\s+\d{1,2}(?:\s+\d{6,})*$): Lookahead to ensure we have age number 1 or 2 digits ahead

Upvotes: 1

glenn jackman
glenn jackman

Reputation: 247012

Here's how you could parse the file with awk

awk '{
  # search backwards to find the first number between 0 and 10
  for (i = NF; i > 2; i--) {
    if (0 <= $i && $i <= 10) {
      brothers_col = i
      break
    }
  }
  if (i == 2) next          # did not find a name, skip this line
  name = ""
  for (i = 2; i < brothers_col; i++) {
    name = name $i OFS
  }
  print name
' file

Upvotes: 0

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