Help with extracting a part of a line between two patterns

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello All,

I have a text file with contents as below:

 
contents of error.txt:
message1="Reason for error code1"
message2="Reason for error code2"
message3="Reason for error code3.
                    To solve this, you may try doing restart"

I have a requirement where in I have to extract the contents between the " and save it in a variable for each error code and use it later in my shell script.
(Please note that the messages may be spanned across multi-lines between " as for message3.)

I managed to do it something like:

 
#!/bin/ksh
## some code here
 
value=`sed -n '/code3/{N;s/.*"\(.*\)".*/\1/p}'  error.txt`
echo "Reason for error code3 is:$value"

 
Output should look like:
user1@linux:/home/user1> ./error_message.ksh
Reason for error code3 is:Reason for error code3.
                    To solve this, you may try doing restart

This works in ksh in linux OS. But, I am facing problem in executing the same peice of code in AIX. :confused::confused:

Please help..!!

Thanks in anticipation.

2

just source it.

$ cat var.txt
message1="Reason for error code1"
message2="Reason for error code2"
message3="Reason for error code3.
                    To solve this, you may try doing restart"

#Source the file var.txt
$ . var.txt 

$ echo $message1
Reason for error code1

$ echo $message2 
Reason for error code2

$ echo $message3
Reason for error code3. To solve this, you may try doing restart
1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply.

As per my requirement, the txt file cannot be executable. So I cannot source it. I have to just read it.:rolleyes:
Is there any other way that I could get the values of the variables.

PS: The "new line character" in the value should be preserved. The value for message3 should come in two lines only.

4

Sourcing a file does not require it to be executable.

To preserve the carriage return, enclose the variable in quotes:

echo "$message3"

    .  filename [arguments]
     source filename [arguments]
          Read and execute commands from filename in the  current
          shell  environment  and  return  the exit status of the
          last command executed from filename.  If filename  does
          not  contain  a  slash,  file names in PATH are used to
          find  the  directory  containing  filename.   The  file
          searched for in PATH need not be executable.  When bash
          is not in posix mode, the current directory is searched
          if  no file is found in PATH.  If the sourcepath option
          to the shopt builtin command is turned off, the PATH is
          not  searched.   If  any  arguments  are supplied, they
          become the positional parameters when filename is  exe-
          cuted.    Otherwise   the   positional  parameters  are
          unchanged.  The return status is the status of the last
          command  exited within the script (0 if no commands are
          executed), and false if filename is not found or cannot
          be read.
1 Like
5

This made it so simple :wink:
I was under the impression that the file should be an executable to source it.

I have learnt something new :wink: