While loop till length of line is great enough

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have the following code:

# Get the line of stations_info.txt starting with "${xstation1} " and copy it to file temp.txt
					grep "^${xstation1} " stations_info.txt > temp.txt
					# Get lat and long of station
                                        nl=0
                                        LEN=0
 					while [ ${LEN} -lt 10 ]; do
					line=
					let nl=nl+1
					line=$(head -n ${nl} temp.txt)
					LEN=$(echo ${#line})				
					done
					echo $line > temp2.txt
					lat=`awk '{print $3}' temp2.txt`
					long=`awk '{print $4}' temp2.txt`
					echo ${lat} ${long} >> ${PROJECT}/sources.txt
					rm temp.txt temp2.txt

The idea is to take the line of stations_info.txt which has the station name in the line. I then want to find the line with a length greater than 10. Using this line I need to extract the values from the third and fourth columns. My problem is that the line just extends and isn't reset. How can I get the line to reset, or do the above in another way?

Thanks in advance

---------- Post updated at 01:09 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:03 PM ----------

I was being silly - have to change head

2

This doesn't seem right. You're using too many temporary output files. Show what is in the input file and what the output should look like.
You may be able to do what you want simply by using awk not both shell script and awk.

3 
awk -vstation="${xstation1}" '$1 == station{p=1}p&&length($0)>10{print $3,$4;exit}' stations_info.txt >> "${PROJECT}/sources.txt"