Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

How to do it...

A text file database can be built with common shell tools.

To create an address list, create a file with one line per address and fields separated by a known character. In this case, the character is a tilde (~):

    first last~Street~City, State~Country~Phone~

For instance:

    Joe User~123 Example Street~AnyTown, District~1-123-123-1234~

Then add a function to find lines that match a pattern and translate each line into a human-friendly format:

    function  addr {
        grep $1 $HOME/etc/addr.txt | sed 's/~/\n/g'
    }

When in use, this would resemble the following:

    $ addr Joe
    Joe User
    123 Example Street  
    AnyTown District
    1-123-123-1234