What I currently have is:

if [ "$USER" = aselive ] ; then
. /live/.profile
elif [ "$USER" = aselive8 ] ; then
. /live8/.profile
fi

I would like to reduce this to a single line by concatenating the
$USER variable and reading the relevant .profile, maybe using
something like:

echo $USER | awk '{ print substr($0,4) }'

What would be the best way to achieve this?

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On 2007-01-31, ashley73@gmail.com wrote:
> What I currently have is:
>
> if [ "$USER" = aselive ] ; then
> . /live/.profile
> elif [ "$USER" = aselive8 ] ; then
> . /live8/.profile
> fi
>
> I would like to reduce this to a single line

Why? There is no advantage to having it on a single line.

> by concatenating the
> $USER variable and reading the relevant .profile, maybe using
> something like:
>
> echo $USER | awk '{ print substr($0,4) }'
>
> What would be the best way to achieve this?

. "./$USER/.profile"


--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author   |    <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
Shell Scripting Recipes:     |  My code in this post, if any,
A Problem-Solution Approach  |         is released under the
2005, Apress                 |    GNU General Public Licence

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ashley73@gmail.com wrote:
> What I currently have is:
>
> if [ "$USER" = aselive ] ; then
> . /live/.profile
> elif [ "$USER" = aselive8 ] ; then
> . /live8/.profile
> fi

This is shorter:

case "$USER" in
aselive|aselive8) . /`echo "$USER" | sed -e s/...//`/.profile ;;
esac

I wouldn't say it's cleaner, though!

- Logan

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On 2007-01-31, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
> On 2007-01-31, ashley73@gmail.com wrote: 
>
>    Why? There is no advantage to having it on a single line.
> 
>
> . "./$USER/.profile"

Make that:

. "./${USER#ase}/.profile"

Or, if you only want to do it for users aselive and aselive8:

case $USER in aselive|aselive8) . "./${USER#ase}/.profile"; esac

--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author   |    <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
Shell Scripting Recipes:     |  My code in this post, if any,
A Problem-Solution Approach  |         is released under the
2005, Apress                 |    GNU General Public Licence

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

<ashley73@gmail.com> wrote:
>What I currently have is:
>if [ "$USER" = aselive ] ; then
>. /live/.profile
>elif [ "$USER" = aselive8 ] ; then
>. /live8/.profile
>fi


>I would like to reduce this to a single line by concatenating the
>$USER variable and reading the relevant .profile,

You mean concatenating the path to a substring of the $USER variable.

USERBASE=$(expr substr $USER 4 99)
. /$USERBASE/.profile

or just
. /$(expr substr $USER 4 99)/.profile

If you're using a shell other than bash, you can use backticks instead of $(
),
and if you don't have gnu expr, you can find other commands to do the same
thing.

>echo $USER | awk '{ print substr($0,4) }'

write it as

. /`echo $USER | awk '{print substr($0,4) }'`/.profile

and it'll work.

>What would be the best way to achieve this?

There is no best way.  There's lots of adequate ways.  Welcome to shell
scripting - if you want a good way to do stuff like this without spawning
dozens of tiny little programs, use a more powerful language (perl, ruby,
python, etc.).
--
Mark Rafn    dagon@dagon.net    <http://www.dagon.net/>

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ashley73@gmail.com wrote:
> What I currently have is:

> if [ "$USER" = aselive ] ; then
> . /live/.profile
> elif [ "$USER" = aselive8 ] ; then
> . /live8/.profile
> fi

> I would like to reduce this to a single line by concatenating the
> $USER variable and reading the relevant .profile, maybe using
> something like:

> echo $USER | awk '{ print substr($0,4) }'

> What would be the best way to achieve this?

I doubt that this is the "best way" but at least it's a single line
and that's what you asked for;-)

u=`echo $a | grep -E 'aselive8?'` && . /`echo $u | sed 's/ase//'`/.profile

Regards, Jens
--
\   Jens Thoms Toerring  ___      jt@toerring.de
\__________________________      http://toerring.de

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ashley73@gmail.com wrote:

> What I currently have is:
>
> if [ "$USER" = aselive ] ; then
> . /live/.profile
> elif [ "$USER" = aselive8 ] ; then
> . /live8/.profile
> fi
>
> I would like to reduce this to a single line by concatenating the
> $USER variable and reading the relevant .profile, maybe using
> something like:
>
> echo $USER | awk '{ print substr($0,4) }'
>
> What would be the best way to achieve this?

Ifyou're absolutely using bash, it's pretty simple:

. ${USER:3}/.profile

And that's it.

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Christopher Layne wrote:
> . ${USER:3}/.profile

. /${USER:3}/.profile

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2007-01-31, 01:50(-08), Christopher Layne:
> Christopher Layne wrote: 
>
> . /${USER:3}/.profile
[...]

That's ksh93/bash specific syntax (with an error has you need to
quote the ${...} above).

In standard shell (sh) syntax (not to be confused with Bourne
shell) (which bash, ksh93 and other shells (including all the
standard sh of every Unix systems) recognise), it's:

. "/${USER#???}/.profile"

--
Stéphane

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Stephane CHAZELAS wrote:

> In standard shell (sh) syntax (not to be confused with Bourne
> shell) (which bash, ksh93 and other shells (including all the
> standard sh of every Unix systems) recognise), it's:
>
> . "/${USER#???}/.profile"
>

And yet what did my first line in my reply say?

"Ifyou're absolutely using bash, it's pretty simple:"

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