Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:36:35 +1030 From: "Rob" <listone@deathbeforedecaf.net> To: "Daniela" <dgw@liwest.at>, <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Complex quoting task in tcsh Message-ID: <009801c3cdc9$88507280$a4b826cb@goo> References: <200312290334.25341.dgw@liwest.at>
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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 $LINE
fi
done
For more complex work, perl or python are usually recommended.
On the other hand, if you just want to filter the comments out of a
file, put
grep -v '^#'
at the start of your pipeline.
* Csh Programming Considered Harmful (1996)
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/language/versus/csh.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniela" <dgw@liwest.at>
Subject: Complex quoting task in tcsh
> I'm writing a tcsh script and I can't figure out how to escape that #.
> I tried all possible variations, and it always says I have a syntax
error.
> Here's one:
> if ($line =~ "#*")
> Or is there another way to find out if the line starts with a hash
mark?
>
> Regards,
> Daniela
>
>
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