Help with a shell script

Delzhand

I'm trying to pare down a string from something like this:

Database name : mysite_drupal

to just plain

mysite_drupal

What I have so far:

sitename=$(drush status | grep "Database name")
sitename=${sitename##*:} //this is supposed to get rid of all characters until the last instance of :
echo xxx $sitename xxx

The xxx strings are there so I can see what's being output where, and here's the kicker, the output looks like this:

xxxmysite_drupal

It is ignoring the first space and completely truncating the xxx after the sitename, and I don't know why.

rfalias

Delzhand wrote: »

I'm trying to pare down a string from something like this:

Database name : mysite_drupal

to just plain

mysite_drupal

What I have so far:

sitename=$(drush status | grep "Database name")
sitename=${sitename##*:} //this is supposed to get rid of all characters until the last instance of :
echo xxx $sitename xxx

The xxx strings are there so I can see what's being output where, and here's the kicker, the output looks like this:

xxxmysite_drupal

It is ignoring the first space and completely truncating the xxx after the sitename, and I don't know why.

Does that grep return that string like you typed?
I tried it and it works for me if I just use a string as initial sitename. Only thing I can think of is that grep isn't returning what you are expecting.

Delzhand

I think grep is appending a newline or something. Is there an easy way to force it to print gremlins like \n?

Edit: Hmm.
tar -czf $sitename.tar.gz .
gives me this:

tar: \r.tar.gz: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

and ends up creating sitename_drupal just fine, minus the .tar.gz. Maybe I can hack it by renaming the file afterwards.

mightyjongyo

Use awk. You can have it split on spaces and then print the last field (assuming that "Database name : mysite_drupal" is the whole string).

eg: echo $var | awk F ' ' '{print $NF }'

(i'm not sure on the syntax, but you can google 'awk print last field')

edit: I'm not sure if this is bash or what, but awk is a linux command so if you have some way to run it from within the language you're using it should still be fine.

Delzhand

New question! If I want to rename a file to have a date in it, how would I do that? I want to rename myfile.tar.gz to myfile_08_18_10.tar.gz.

In a script obviously, I can't just do "mv myfile.tar.gz myfile_08_18_10.tar.gz" of course.

edit: disregard, I found the answer.