Entries Tagged 'Scripts' ↓

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Any Unix shell script longer than a line will most likely involve using variables. Variables are used to store temporary values to simply using them in various Unix commands of your script. The beauty of using variables is that they can be evaluated and set ones, but then reused as many times as you like without your shell interpreter having to re-evaluate them again.

Defining a variable in Unix shell

To specify a value for a variable, you need to decide on the variable name - can be any word or combination of English alphabet symbols and digits, and specify the value.

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I had a need to scan a huge directory tree today, identifying the users and Unix groups owning all the files. The problem I faced was too long usernames and group names which meant the

find /directory -ls

command which I normally use for such tasks wasn't terribly useful because there was no space delimiter between a username and a group. Results of such scan of the directory tree will have to later be parsed by other tools, and that's why proper splitting of the output into separate fields is so important.

This issue was motivational enough to refresh my Perl skills and sketch the following script (based entirely on this Never Run Unix Find Again article).

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