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07.07.2008 at 01:01PM PDT, ID: 23544564
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9.9

parsing fields from a line that contains an asterisk

Asked by littlejon1 in Unix Systems Programming, Linux Programming, General Macintosh Programming

Tags:

I'm trying to parse various fields from the /etc/shadow file in linux. It works fine unless the 2nd field on a line contains only an '*' (asterisk). The 2nd field is the encrypted password. When the script encounters an asterisk, it appears to replace $line with the directory listing. For example,

Here's an example of two lines from the /etc/shadow file:
root:$123lkjakjh.:13987:0:99999:7:::
nobody:*:13508:0:99999:7:::

My code is:
while read line ; do
  echo $line | awk '{ print $1 " " $2 " " $3 " " $4 }'
done < /etc/shadow

The output is:
root $123lkjakjh. 13987 0
nobody filename1 filename2.sh filename3.rpm

What gives replacing the asterisk with file names? How do I work around this to get the actual contents of the shadow file rather than a directory listing?

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[+][-]07.07.2008 at 01:14PM PDT, ID: 21948296

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About this solution

Zones: Unix Systems Programming, Linux Programming, General Macintosh Programming
Tags: unix shell script
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Solution Provided By: Tintin
Participating Experts: 1
Solution Grade: A
 
 
 
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