grep question

[BradC78]

Hello, I have a homework question that I have been working on since yesterday, and I'm not making any progress. I'm not asking for the answer, just a push in the right direction so I can try to do it myself. Here's the problem:

I have a bunch of directories and sub-directories that all contain emails. Each email is an individual file where the first 6 lines are:

ThreadNum:
Subject:
To:
From:
TimeStamp:
Sent:

I want to create a bash script that generates a summary file. There would be one row for each email, and each row would have the 6 fields above seperated by a comma or something.

Again, please don't post an answer. I'm not looking to cheat, I am just out of ideas. Thanks!

[vsemaska]

Maybe grep's -A option would be useful.

[Cabhan]

Well, if you're looking for the first six lines of a file, the 'head' program might be useful. You could use the command 'head -n6' to get the first lines.

Combining this with a loop might be helpful.

[BradC78]

Thanks for your help! Here's what I came up with. I know it's probably the least efficient way on earth to do it, but it works...

#!/bin/bash

ARCHIVE=/home/brad/CS571/week3/TEST_DrMathArchive

# Prepare the BradsTempFile file in the current directory
   echo "" > ./BradsTempFile

# FOR EACH FILE IN THE $ARCHIVE DIRECTORY,
for FILE in `ls $ARCHIVE`; do

# TEST IF THE FILE IS A DIRECTORY
   if [ -d $ARCHIVE/$FILE ]; then

   # ACTION IF $FILE IS A DIRECTORY

      # LOOP THROUGH THE FILES ONE AT A TIME
         for EmailFile in `ls $ARCHIVE/$FILE`; do

         # Find the first instance of "From:"
            strFrom=`awk '/^From: / {print $2,$3,$4,$5,$6}' $ARCHIVE/$FILE/$EmailFile`  
        
         # Find the first instance of "TimeStamp:"
            strDate=`awk '/^TimeStamp: / {print $2}' $ARCHIVE/$FILE/$EmailFile`

         # Split date out into Month and Year
            strDateM=${strDate:0:2} 
            strDateY=${strDate:6:4}
            
         # Create the data line by joining fields together
            DataLine=`echo $strFrom "-" $strDateM $strDateY`

         # Send the data line to the temp file
            echo $DataLine >> ./BradsTempFile

         done
    fi
done