unix - How can I get my bash script to work?

Question

My bash script doesn't work the way I want it to:

#!/bin/bash

total="0"
count="0"
#FILE="$1" This is the easier way
for FILE in $*
do
    # Start processing all processable files
    while read line
    do
        if [[ "$line" =~ ^Total ]];
        then
            tmp=$(echo $line | cut -d':' -f2)
            count=$(expr $count + 1)
            total=$(expr $total + $tmp)
        fi     
    done < $FILE
done
echo "The Total Is: $total"
echo "$FILE"

Is there another way to modify this script so that it reads arguments into $1 instead of $FILE? I've tried using a while loop:

while [ $1 != "" ]
  do ....
done

Also when I implement that the code repeats itself. Is there a way to fix that as well?

Another problem that I'm having is that when I have multiple files hi*.txt it gives me duplicates. Why? I have files like hi1.txt hi1.txt~ but the tilde file is of 0 bytes, so my script shouldn't be finding anything.

---

What i have is fine, but could be improved. I appreciate your awk suggestions but its currently beyond my level as a unix programmer.

Strager: The files that my text editor generates automatically contain nothing..it is of 0 bytes..But yeah i went ahead and deleted them just to be sure. But no my script is in fact reading everything twice. I suppose its looping again when it really shouldnt. I've tried to silence that action with the exit commands..But wasnt successful.

while [ "$1" != "" ]; do
    # Code here

    # Next argument
    shift
done

This code is pretty sweet, but I'm specifying all the possible commands at one time. Example: hi[145].txt If supplied would read all three files at once. Suppose the user enters hi*.txt; I then get all my hi files read twice and then added again.

How can I code it so that it reads my files (just once) upon specification of hi*.txt? I really think that this is because of not having $1.

Answer 1

It looks like you are trying to add up the totals from the lines labelled 'Total:' in the files provided. It is always a good idea to state what you're trying to do - as well as how you're trying to do it (see How to Ask Questions the Smart Way).

If so, then you're doing in about as complicated a way as I can see. What was wrong with:

grep '^Total:' "$@" |
cut -d: -f2 |
awk '{sum += $1}
     END { print sum }'

This doesn't print out "The total is" etc; and it is not clear why you echo $FILE at the end of your version.

You can use Perl or any other suitable program in place of awk; you could do the whole job in Perl or Python - indeed, the cut work could be done by awk:

grep "^Total:" "$@" |
awk -F: '{sum += $2}
         END { print sum }'

Taken still further, the whole job could be done by awk:

awk -F: '$1 ~ /^Total/ { sum += $2 }
         END { print sum }' "$@"

The code in Perl wouldn't be much harder and the result might be quicker:

perl -na -F: -e '$sum += $F[1] if m/^Total:/; END { print $sum; }' "$@"

When iterating over the file name arguments provided in a shell script, you should use '"$@"' in place of '$*' as the latter notation does not preserve spaces in file names.

Your comment about '$1' is confusing to me. You could be asking to read from the file whose name is in $1 on each iteration; that is done using:

while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do
     ...process $1...
     shift
done

HTH!