Assign Values to a Variable in While Loop and Update the File

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello,

Could anyone please help me with Assigning a value to variable and then updating the value in the original file

IFS='|'
while read -r Serial_ID JOB_NAME STATUS 
do
if [ "$STATUS" = "" ]
then 
echo "Perform Fuctions"
???Assign STATUS to COMPLETED and Update File???    
done <File
2

Show the input you have and show the output you want.

3

On a hunch, perhaps something like:

while IFS="|" read -r SERIAL JOB STATUS
do
        if [ condition ] 
        then
                STATUS="somethingelse"
        fi
        printf "%s|%s|%s\n" "$SERIAL" "$JOB" "$STATUS"
done < inputfile > outputfile

Note that inputfile and outputfile can't be the same.

4

Not sure I entirely understand, but

STATUS=COMPLETED
printf "%s%s%s%s%s\n" "$Serial_ID" $IFS "$JOB_NAME" $IFS "$STATUS" >> file2

and rename file2 to FIle after the loop?

5

Process the ones which have null in the 3rd column and then update the 3rd column in the file as COMPLETED

Input

123|ABC|
456|PQR|COMPLETED
111|XYZ|
121|ASD|COMPLETED

Output

123|ABC|COMPLETED
456|PQR|COMPLETED
111|XYZ|COMPLETED
121|ASD|COMPLETED

---------- Post updated at 03:49 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:46 PM ----------

I need to use the same file and update the row in the file by assigning Completed in the 3rd column after i perform some functions

6

You cannot.

Not with standard text files.

7

Files do not work that way. Even something like sed -i really just replaces or overwrites the entire file.

So I think my method should work:

cp inputfile inputfile.bak
while IFS="|" read -r SERIAL JOB STATUS
do
        if [ -z "$STATUS" ] 
        then
                do_something
                STATUS="somethingelse"
        fi
        printf "%s|%s|%s\n" "$SERIAL" "$JOB" "$STATUS"
done < inputfile > outputfile

mv outputfile inputfile
1 Like
8

Thank You So much Corona, i guess this should be good enough for me and meets my requirement