On 5/17/05, kevin.kempter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <kevin.kempter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tuesday 17 May 2005 16:55, linux.whiz@xxxxxxxxx wrote: > > My brain is fried. I know there is a simple answer to this but I'm > > drawing a blank. I want to run a script against the contents of a > > text file. The text file is just my users' first name, middle initial > > and last name like this: > > > > John A Smith > > Mary P James > > Sally R Jones > > Fred Q Davis > > > > What I want to do is for each user in this file, run a script. I > > tried to do this: > > > > for i in `cat textfile`; do > > myscript.sh $i > > done > > > > I expect this to run like this: > > > > myscript.sh John A Smith > > myscript.sh Mary P James > > myscript.sh Sally R Jones > > myscript.sh Fred Q Davis > > > > Instead it runs like this: > > > > myscript.sh John > > myscript.sh A > > myscript.sh Smith > > ... > > etc. > > > > How do I get this script to run correctly? > > > > Thanks! > > LW > > You get this behavior because the internal field separator by default > recognizes spaces, tebs, etc as field separators. > > Try this instead (where names.lst is your file of names): > > exec < ./names.lst > while read line > do > myscript.sh $line > done As soon as I issue the exec < ./names.lst command, my shell exits. My understanding is that exec takes over the PID of the current process, so when you try to exec a text file it makes sense that the process would exit. Other ideas?
