Question

I have cron entry that looks like this which works: (passing in 5 inputs)

30 10 * * 5 sh /home/test.sh hostnm101.abc /mypath/dir test foobar F008AR >> /logs/mytst.log 2>&1

I want to change it so I store inputs (4,5) foobar and F008AR in a separate file and read in by
script test.sh ($4,$5)

test.sh

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# != 5 ]; then
    exit 1
fi

DIRDT=`date '+%Y%m%d'`
TSTDIR=$2/test/$DIRDATE
[ ! -d "$TSTDIR" ] && ( mkdir "$TSTDIR" || { echo 'mkdir command failed'; exit 1; } )

perl /home/dev/tstextr.pl -n $1 -b $2 -d $TSTDIR/ -s $3 -u $4 -p $5 -f $DIRDT

Is there any easy way to do this within the cron for those (2) input values? Thanks.

Answer 1

Alright try this way.

1) Create a separate file /mypath/dir/login.info with content like this (username/password in separate lines):

foobar
F008AR

2) Modify your test.sh like this:

#!/bin/bash
if [ $# != 4 ]; then
    exit 1
fi

DIRDT=`date '+%Y%m%d'`
TSTDIR=$2/test/$DIRDATE
[ ! -d "$TSTDIR" ] && ( mkdir "$TSTDIR" || { echo 'mkdir command failed'; exit 1; } )

IFS="
"
arr=( $(<$2/$4) )
#echo "username=${arr[0]}   password=${arr[1]}"

perl /home/dev/tstextr.pl -n $1 -b $2 -d $TSTDIR/ -s $3 -u ${arr[0]} -p ${arr[1]} -f $DIRDT

3) Have your cron command like this:

30 10 * * 5 sh /home/test.sh hostnm101.abc /mypath/dir test login.info >> /logs/mytst.log 2>&1

Summary

• IFS stands for Internal Field Separator (IFS) in bash

I am using it like this:

IFS="
"

Which means make new line character as field separator (since we are storing username and password in 2 separate lines). And then this line to read file /mypath/dir/login.info into an array:

arr=( $(<$2/$4) )

• First line (username) is read into $arr[0]
• Second line (password) is read into $arr[1]

You can echo it to check read content:

echo "username=${arr[0]}"
echo "password=${arr[1]}"