I am trying to display information from my current directory into a 5 column format, but I am stuck on where to start. If anyone could offer some assistance it would be greatly appreciated. Someone has mentioned a recursive call to the shell script may make the task a little easier. Thanks
Recursive calls. Hi topdog, Yes, it must be frustrating trying to work out what people are saying in their posts, just like it is for me a very novice linux user that has to design scripts in an obviously abstract programming language for such a novice like myself. this script is supposed to display the present working directory and lists it contents in 5-column format on the screen, the program has to accept the starting directory as a positional parameter and descend through the directories and subdirectories and list their contents in the above said "5 column format." This is what I have tried, but has not worked. #!/bin/bash # FILE: PartC chmod 770 PartC set -x wcfiles() { local BASEDIR=$1 # Set the local base directory local LOCALDIR=`dallnsn` # Where are we? cd $BASEDIR # Go to this directory (down) local filelist=`ls -r` # Get the files in this directory for file in $filelist do if [ -d $file ] # If we are a directory, recurs then # we are a directory wcfiles "$BASEDIR/$file" else fc=`wc -w < $file` # do word count and echo info echo "$BASEDIR/$file $fc words" fi done cd $LOCALDIR # Go back up to the calling directory } if [ $1 ] # Default to . if no parms then wcfile $1 else wcfile "." fi Well that's about it, I can't say anymore than that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.