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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T09:51:19+00:00

read -p Please enter ID: staffID id=$(grep -w $staffID record | cut -d :

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read -p "Please enter ID: " staffID 
id=$(grep -w "$staffID" record | cut -d ":" -f1 | sort -u );
echo $id

I have some issues with trying to grep the correct value from a file.

The following is stored in the record file.

12:Griffin:Peter:13:14:16
14:Griffin:Meg:19:19:10
10:Griffin:Loi:19:20:20
130:Griffin:Stewie:19:19:19
13:Wayne:Bruce:19:20:2

My first column stores the id which is always unique and is what I am looking for in grep. With the code above, I only want to find the unique ID which is entered by a user and is displayed on screen but my echo produces a blank value if I enter an ID of 13 when it should produce 13 obviously. Any ideas which would solve this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team
    #!/bin/bash
read -p "Please enter ID: " staffID

#your code was commented out
#id=$(grep -w "$staffID" record | cut -d ":" -f1 | sort -u );

id=$(grep -oP "^${staffID}(?=:)" record)
line=$(grep "^${staffID}:" record)

echo $id #use this line if you just want ID 
echo $line #use this line if you want the line with given ID

    see comments in codes

    Note
    I don’t know the exact requirement, but I suggest that before do grep, check user input, if they inputted a valid id ([0-9]+) maybe? Because user could input .*

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