Scripting-Search Multiple Strings

Question

I have a script (./lookup) that will search a file ($c). The file will contain a list of cities. What I would like to do be able to search the file for what the user enters as an argument (./lookup Miami). For example; I can make the script return what I want if it is a single word city (Miami), but I can't figure out a way to make it work for 2 or more words (Los Angeles). I can get the single strings to return what I want with the following.

grep $1 $c

I was thinking about a loop, but I am not sure on how to do that as I am new to scripting and Linux. Thanks for any help.

John Zwinck · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-01 02:40:59Z

1

Whenever arguments could possibly contain spaces, proper quoting is essential in Bash:

grep "$1" "$c"

The user will need to say ./lookup "Los Angeles". If you don't like that, you can try:

grep "$*" "$c"

Then all arguments to the script will be passed together as one string to grep.

answered Oct 1, 2014 at 2:40

John Zwinck

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1 Comment

swam Over a year ago

Thank you very much! This makes sense. I was under the impression that by quoting $*, it would take it literally. Thanks for the solution!

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