In this, 'type>' represents your terminal prompt; Ctrl-d means press the Ctrl key and the 'd' key at the same time.
| What you need to do | How you can do it | |
| get into your home directory | type> cd | |
| save script in a file named log | type> cat 1>log | |
| the first line says to use bash to interpret this script | #!/bin/bash | |
| define the name and location of the logfile (use lower case to avoid accidental confusion with environment variables that are defined and used by the shell) | logfile=$HOME/logged.comments | |
| deal with the first parameter, which is the variable named 1, whose value is accessed by referring to it as $1 | case $1 in | |
| if it is null (represented by an opening quote, followed by nothing at all, and then a closing quote) prompt for the text and save it in a variable named 'comment' | "") read -p "log text: < " comment | |
| create a day stamp for this text | day=$(/bin/date -R|tr -d ','|awk '{print $1,$2,$3}') | |
| append the day stamp and the text of the comment to the logfile | echo "$day: $comment">>$logfile | |
| check that the comment was added to the end of the logfile correctly | tail -1 $logfile | |
| remind yourself of the name of the logfile, and quit the case statement | echo "logfile is $logfile" ;; | |
| if you typed 'log -v' or 'log v' then view file, and quit the case statement | -v|v) less $logfile ;; | |
| if you typed `log -e' or 'log e' then edit the file, and quit the case statement | -e|e) nano $logfile ;; | |
| if you typed `log -p' or 'log p' then print the file, check the printer queue, and quit the case statement | -e|e) a2ps $logfile; lpq ;; | |
| if there were any other arguments, they are mistakes, so just print out a reminder of how to use this script, and quit the case statement | *) echo "use: log [-e|-v|-p], blank prompts for comment" ;; | |
| case done | esac | |
| exit script | exit 0 | |
| close and save the script file | Ctrl-d | |
| point to this log script | type> alias log='$HOME/log' | |
| make alias permanent (between log and >> that is a single quote followed by a double quote) | type> echo "alias log='$HOME/log'">>$HOME/.bashrc | |
| make script executable | type> chmod +x log | |
| try it out from any directory | type> log log text: < installed w3m to get text from .html Mon 12 Jul: installed w3m to get text from .html logfile is /home/user/logged.comments |