Steven W. Orr wrote:
<snip>
: Why use grep or pr or any other shellout when you can just do it right
: from within bash?
:
: myRead()
: {
: typeset line1, line2, line3
: read line1
: read line2
: read line3
: echo "$line1 $line2 $line3"
: [[ -n "$line1" && -n "$line2" && -n "$line3" ]]
: }
: while myRead
: do
: :
: done < /usr/share/dict/words
I could be wrong, but to answer your question:
1) Because `pr --columns=3' is a whole lot easier to type than what you suggest
2) Because what you suggest has a bug, at least on my machine.
When I run it, I get
==>./foo
./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier
./foo: line 3: typeset: `line2,': not a valid identifier
./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier
./foo: line 3: typeset: `line2,': not a valid identifier
./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier
./foo: line 3: typeset: `line2,': not a valid identifier
./foo: line 3: typeset: `line1,': not a valid identifier
and so forth
3) Because your suggestion would give the opposite of what I would
expect if I were asked to turn the following into three columns:
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
I would want:
a e i
b f j
c g k
d h l
Yours will give:
a b c
d e f
g h i
j k l
Dean
