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From: Daniela <dgw@liwest.at>
To: "Rob" <listone@deathbeforedecaf.net>, <questions@freebsd.org>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 01:33:53 +0000
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Subject: Re: Complex quoting task in tcsh
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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.


> For more complex work, perl or python are usually recommended.

You can do lots of stuff with shellscript: look at user.berklix.org/~dgw


> 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.


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniela" <dgw@liwest.at>
> Subject: Complex quoting task in tcsh
>
> > I'm writing a tcsh script and I can't figure out how to escape that #.
> > I tried all possible variations, and it always says I have a syntax
>
> error.
>
> > Here's one:
> > if ($line =~ "#*")
> > Or is there another way to find out if the line starts with a hash
>
> mark?
>
> > Regards,
> > Daniela
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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