Is this useful?

[happypandaface]

This is my first working bash script. I got tired of typing 'apt-cache search' and 'apt-get install' so I made this:

#! /bin/bash

things=`apt-cache search $1`
dline=0
for thing in $things
do
	dline=$(( $dline + 1 ))
	gpkg[$dline]=$thing
done

line=0
pkg=0
while [ $line -ne $dline ]
do
	if [ "${gpkg[$line + 1]}" = "-" ]
	then
		pkg=$(( $pkg + 1))
		tpkg[$pkg]=${gpkg[$line]}
		echo "$pkg ${gpkg[$line]} -"
	else
		if [ "${gpkg[$line + 2]}" = "-" ]
		then
			echo 
		else
			echo -n " ${gpkg[$line + 1]}"
		fi
	fi
	line=$(( $line + 1 ))
done
echo
echo -n "choose a file number to install: "
read linedir
echo ${tpkg[$linedir]}
apt-get install ${tpkg[$linedir]}

Plus I had a lot of free time on my hands. I think it will speed up apt-get installations immensely. Go ahead and try it out.

[happypandaface]

I called it getpkg
Heres how to use it, I forgot to put this in. You have to chmod a+x it first, then when you run it, specify a package that you want to install. ex

#  chmod a+x getpkg
#  ./getpkg gettext

I programmed it for ubuntu, it may not work for other distros

[bigtomrodney]

That looks pretty interesting, but I see you have no handling for root/sudo access. I know a lot of current thinking is that only what needs to be run as root should be.

Also I see that you are using a root prompt. Bear in mind that the root user is disabled by default in Ubuntu. While I personally didn't like this behaviour at the start I do think it is a sensible approach given the userbase of Ubuntu is largely new users so I usually discourage users from setting a root password. With all that in mind I'd prefix the last line with sudo as it is an interactive script and a password can be provided. Also I would add exit to provide a clean exit to the script. In this case you might want to use the exit status from apt-get rather than declare it to be a specific value.

The last two lines:

sudo apt-get install ${tpkg[$linedir]}
exit $?

[happypandaface]

Whats the $? at the end for?

[Cabhan]

"$?" is the exit status of the last command. In this case, it will be the exit status of the "apt-get install ...". This way, your script will exit with the same status as apt, so if apt errors, your script will report an error.

One other note:

Whenever you use a variable in Bash scripting, you should quote it. Suppose I call your script like so:

./getpkg "hello world"

Now, in your first line, the following gets executed:

things=`apt-cache search hello world`

Notice how what I passed as one argument ("hello world") has now become two ("hello" and "world"). This will be avoided if you quote the "$1".


Remember also that "useful" is very subjective. If it's useful to you, then it's useful! I have a bunch of scripts and small C programs lying around my box that I've never shown to anybody, but which are useful to me, and were therefore worth the time to write.