6.5. exercises

these are some practical examples where awk can be useful.

1. for the first exercise, your input is lines in the following form:

   username:firstname:lastname:telephone number

   make an awk script that will convert such a line to an ldap record in this format:

   dn: uid=username, dc=example, dc=com cn: firstname lastname sn: lastname telephonenumber: telephone number

   create a file containing a couple of test records and check.

2. create a bash script using awk and standard unix commands that will show the top three users of disk space in the /home file system (if you don't have the directory holding the homes on a separate partition, make the script for the / partition; this is present on every unix system). first, execute the commands from the command line. then put them in a script. the script should create sensible output (sensible as in readable by the boss). if everything proves to work, have the script email its results to you (use for instance mail -s disk space usage <you@your_comp> < result).

   if the quota daemon is running, use that information; if not, use find.

3. create xml-style output from a tab-separated list in the following form:

   meaning very long line with a lot of description meaning another long line othermeaning more longline testmeaning looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong line, but i mean really looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong.

   the output should read:

   <row> <entry>meaning</entry> <entry> very long line </entry> </row> <row> <entry>meaning</entry> <entry> long line </entry> </row> <row> <entryothermeaning</entry> <entry> more longline </entry> </row> <row> <entrytestmeaning</entry> <entry> looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong line, but i mean really looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong. </entry> </row>

   additionally, if you know anything about xml, write a begin and end script to complete the table. or do it in html.