Advanced Case Statement question ...

[xponet]

I have a question, I want to be able to do the following, but not sure if it is possible.

I want to create a case statement script that will generate the options that the user can pick by certain files in a directory listing.

For example ...

In the directory I have

report-Addition
report-Subtraction
report-cat
report-dog

so once the script starts, they will have the 4 following choices (addition,subtraction,cat,dog). However, if another file is added into the directory ... report-fish ... the next time the script is run, they will now have 5 choices (addition,subtraction,cat,dog,fish)

is it possible to make a case statement such as described above?

And if it is possible, then I could I use awk to cut away the "report-" before each word before it is displayed as options in the case statement?

I hope this all makes sense ...

I am not a linux expert so I am calling out for some help :P

Thanks!

[sharonenoch]

I just read ur post and a quick thought that occured to me was that

u can run the command "ls" at the beginning of the script
redirect the output of ls to a file "ls > log.txt"
and the use the awk command and make ur case structure
possible.
but note just before exiting the script delete the file usnig the "rm" command. so that the next time it does not append the output again to the same file

so even if u have any new file added. the next time u run the script it will get the new files

this is just a thought. u can improvise on this and try to do this without the use of the temporary file

[xponet]

Yeah thats what I was thinking of doing ... but my question would then be, how do I get the list of files from the temp file to be the choices of my case statement

do I need another loop to do that?
etcetc

thanks

[sharonenoch]

oh ho
so it looks like the case structure should be generated dynamically according to the number of files in the directory right?

let me think. right now only one thought is coming to my mind. Its like a round about way i think.

You can create another script file dynamically (at the beginning of the first script file) with the syntax u want and the case structure needed by reading the temp file line by line and echoing it into the dynamic script file

do a chmod 777 after updating the dynamically created script file

Then if the user selects "addition" you can try running the dynamically created script file from the first script file with the input as addition and the no's to be added etc....


I have not tried this out( will try it out later and let u know how it works out) . I just thought of this logic just now. But there must be some other logic by which we can do it in a simpler way

[sharonenoch]

if u have a better method please tell me also since it will be useful for me also anytime in future when i come across a situation like this

[jim mcnamara]

I would forget the case statement:

ls -1 report* | awk '{ print NR,substr($0,index($0,"-")+1) }'; echo "Q Quit"
read choice
if [ $choice = "Q" ]; then
   exit
fi
let count=1
for file in `ls -1 report*1
do
    if [ $count -eq $choice ];
    then
           workfile=$file
           break;
    fi
done
# at this point workfile is the name of the file
if [ ! -f $workfile ]; then
    echo "invalid choice"
    exit
fi
# you now have a filename = workfile

[xponet]

Awesome, thank you
I will test it out tomorrow

Thanks again

[sharonenoch]

that was really cool , jim

[scm]

Use select:

#!/bin/sh
select file in "Quit" $(ls)
do
    if [ "$file" = "Quit" ]
    then
        exit 0
    fi
    if [ "x$file" = "x" ]
    then
        echo "Please select a file"
    else
        # Do stuff with the selected file.
        echo "You have chosen file \"$file\""
    fi
done

Isn't that easier?