Piping results from ls -l in a bash script

Question

So I used:

getent passwd $2 | awk -F: '{print "|Username: " $1 "\n|Password: " $2 "\n|Uid: " $3 "\n|Gid: " $4 "\n|Comment: " $5 "\n|Home: " $6 "\n|Shell: " $7 "\n"}'

to pipe user info in to a neat list.

I wanted to do the same with folders. I want all the information from the ' ls -l' command but instead of it coming out like a block of test I wanted it listed piece by piece.

Can I use an awk command together with ls and can I use the same method I did earlier?

Not reliably, because the fields in the ls -l output are not unambiguously delimited like those in the passwd database. See for example Why not parse ls (and what to do instead)? — steeldriver, Feb 18 '20 at 14:57
@Fredrik, add groups | sed 's/ /, /g;s/^/Groups: /' at the last line of your script. — Jetchisel, Feb 19 '20 at 05:26

xenoid · Answer 1 · 2020-02-18T18:46:28.327

5

Since you are on Linux you should instead look into the stat command with a proper format (-c, --format). Little known feature, the format accepts C-style length specifiers, so try for instance:

stat -c 'File: %-40n Size: %6s Flags: %8A' *

You can put arbitrary strings in the format, and you can even put linefeeds in it (using the $'string' syntax):

stat -c $'--------------\nFile:     %n\nSize:     %s\nFlags:    %A' /boot/*
--------------
File:     /boot/abi-4.13.0-45-generic
Size:     1501528
Flags:    -rw-r--r--
--------------
File:     /boot/config-4.13.0-45-generic
Size:     213220
Flags:    -rw-r--r--
--------------
File:     /boot/config-4.15.0-72-generic
Size:     217468
Flags:    -rw-r--r--
--------------
File:     /boot/config-4.15.0-74-generic
Size:     217503
Flags:    -rw-r--r--
--------------
File:     /boot/config-4.15.0-76-generic
Size:     217503
Flags:    -rw-r--r--

edited Feb 18 '20 at 18:46

answered Feb 18 '20 at 15:02

xenoid

8,888

I personally like that, but the assignment specifically wants it to look like this: https://gyazo.com/3187d434117170d01771760c5f2770f8 – Fredrik Feb 18 '20 at 16:12
See augmented answer – xenoid Feb 18 '20 at 16:53
The problem with stat over ls -l is that I also want to see the owner of the file, size, and dates. – Fredrik Feb 19 '20 at 10:42
See the the format descriptions for stat, it's all there AFAIK. – xenoid Feb 19 '20 at 11:12

Piping results from ls -l in a bash script

1 Answers1