On Wednesday 31 December 2003, Daniela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Monday 29 December 2003 05:06, Rob wrote: > > Daniela, > > > > This isn't the answer you would like, but tcsh is generally considered a > > bad language for writing scripts*. It's an excellent command-line shell, > > but scripts are not its strong point. > > > > One reason is the one you've just run into - quoting is a little flakey, > > especially when you try to do something tricky. > > > > For 'basic' scripts, either sh(1) or ksh(1) is usually the way to go. As > > an example, here's your line-checking question, using sh and FreeBSD > > commands: > > > > cat somefile | while read LINE ; do > > if echo "$LINE" | grep -q '^#' ; then > > # do something with $LINE > > fi > > done > > Thanks a lot, that grep -q thing also works for tcsh. >
Excellent! > > > For more complex work, perl or python are usually recommended. > > You can do lots of stuff with shellscript: look at user.berklix.org/~dgw > Absolutely - the whole /etc/rc structure for example. I guess what I meant by 'complex' was string matching & manipulation. If I'm writing a shell script that uses awk and sed to chop things up, it starts to get clumsy and hard to read. At that point I'll usually turn it into a perl script. > > > On the other hand, if you just want to filter the comments out of a > > file, put > > > > grep -v '^#' > > > > at the start of your pipeline. > > > > * Csh Programming Considered Harmful (1996) > > http://www.perl.com/pub/a/language/versus/csh.html > > Csh is not harmful at all -- it allows for great optimizing for certain tasks. > _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"