concatenate 2 variables in dialog using awk while in for loop

[haraldboehmecke]

Hi,

I have a variable $accessgroups, which has a series of comma-delimited values, like:

group_a,group_b

The other variable $restaccessgroups has:

group_f,group_g

I also have another set of variables:

group_a_descr=Description of group a
group_b_descr=Description of group b
group_f_descr=Description of group f
group_g_descr=Description of group g


I now want a dialog with group_a and the value of $group_a_descr

dialog --separate-output --output-separator "," --checklist blah 20 80 10 `echo $accessgroups | awk -F, '{ for (i = 1; i < NF; ++i ) print $i " " ${i}_descr " on"}'` `echo $restaccessgroups | awk -F, '{ for (i = 1; i < NF; ++i ) print $i " " ${i}_descr " off"}'`

This gives me

(*)   group_a    group_a,group_b
(*)   group_b    group_a,group_b
( )   group_f    group_f,group_g
( )   group_g    group_f,group_g

What I want:

(*)   group_a    Description of group_a
(*)   group_b    Description of group_b
( )   group_f    Description of group_f
( )   group_g    Description of group_g

I have tried:

awk -F, '{ for (i = 1; i < NF; ++i ) print $i " " $i_descr " on"}'
awk -F, '{ for (i = 1; i < NF; ++i ) print $i " " ${$i}_descr " on"}'
awk -F, '{ for (i = 1; i < NF; ++i ) print $i " ${i}_descr" " on"}'

with no success.

I am open to alternatives to awk....

[atreyu]

I couldn't figure out how to do that w/awk. To make it easier, I'd put things into variables first, then stuff them all into a single variable and pass that variable to dialog, e.g.:

#!/bin/bash
accessgroups='group_a,group_b'
restaccessgroups='group_f,group_g'

group_a_descr='Description of group a'
group_b_descr='Description of group b'
group_f_descr='Description of group f'
group_g_descr='Description of group g'

for group in $(echo $accessgroups|sed -e 's|,| |g'); do
#  echo "group: $group"
  eval descr=$(echo \$${group}_descr)
#  echo "descr: $descr"
  stuff="$stuff $group '$descr' on"
done

for group in $(echo $restaccessgroups|sed -e 's|,| |g'); do
#  echo "group: $group"
  eval descr=$(echo \$${group}_descr)
#  echo "descr: $descr"
  stuff="$stuff $group '$descr' off"
done
#echo "stuff: '$stuff'"

text='blah'
height=20
width=80
list_ht=10
eval dialog --checklist $text $height $width $list_ht $stuff

[haraldboehmecke]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer!

After evaluating various alternatives, the following worked best for me (basically the same you said):

#!/bin/bash
accessgroups='group_a,group_b'
restaccessgroups='group_f,group_g'

group_a_descr='Description of group a'
group_b_descr='Description of group b'
group_f_descr='Description of group f'
group_g_descr='Description of group g'


IFS=, read -ra grps <<< "${accessgroups},${restaccessgroups}"

for grp in "${grps[@]}"; do
    grp_descr=${grp}_descr
   
    if [[ $accessgroups = *"$grp"* ]]; then
        dialog_list_on+=("$grp" "${!grp_descr}" on)
    else
        dialog_list_off+=("$grp" "${!grp_descr}" off)
    fi 
done

dialog --separate-output --output-separator , --checklist blah 20 80 10 "${dialog_list_on[@]}" "${dialog_list_off[@]}"