Removing md5sum lines stored in text file

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello.

I'm writing a script where every file you create will generate a md5sum and store it into a text file.

Say I create 2 files, it'll look like this in the text file:

d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e     /helloworld/saystheman
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e     /helloworld/test

I want the md5sum to be cleared from the text file when I delete the file.
So if I delete 'test', the text file will just have:

d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e     /helloworld/saystheman

I was thinking of using sed to remove the line, but I'm clueless as to how I'm supposed to define the string (consisting of both the md5sum and filename).

Is there a better way to remove the line or a way around using sed?

2 
$ cat text.file
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e /helloworld/saystheman
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e /helloworld/test

$ rm /helloworld/test

$ grep -v "/helloworld/test" text.file >text1.file

$ mv text1.file text.file

$ cat text.file
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e /helloworld/saystheman

If you want this to done automatically then insert above commands in "your own rm" file [ make sure your PATH goes first to YOUR rm instead of standard UNIX rm ]

1 Like
3

Thanks for the quick response. It worked :slight_smile:

4

The code needs to be MUCH more complex than this if you're going to create your own rm utility from end. If you create $HOME/bin/rm containing:

/bin/rm "$1" && grep -v "$1" /absolute/path/to/text.file >/absolute/path/to/text1.file &&
mv /absolute/path/to/text1.file /absolute/path/ttext.file

then the command sequence:

touch /tmp/world
cd /tmp
rm world

will remove every entry from your sample text.file .