I have been trying to find a script to do the following: 1) open text file containing user list 2) test to see if directory already exists (/directory/username) 3) if not exist, create directory (/directory/username) 4) chmod directory 5) do until EOF Any ideas, resources, pieces would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Can be quite easily done in perl (my preferred scripting language when it comes to text files) and very possibly in bash too. The perl script would probably go along the lines of: open text file as an array (@names?) foreach @names { print `mkdir /home/$_`; (if the folder is already there it will just fail to create it) print `chmod $_ /home/$_`; } That's about it....it's not a working script but should give you a starting point. More help on a perl script can be supplied if you want.

OK, I understand the structure and constructs, but have no idea how to code.

Here is what I developed: #!/bin/bash # script to make user home directories # DATA1=/dir1/users.txt DATA2=/dir1/user2.txt DEST=/dir1/home declare -a userarray declare -a delarray delarray=() #array of directories to delete (system accounts, etc.) cat "$DATA1" | tr '\n' ' ' | tr 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ' 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'> $DATA2 read -a userarray < $DATA2 for user1 in "${userarray[@]}" { mkdir $DEST/$user1 chmod 777 $DEST/$user1 echo "$user1 's home directory created" } for user2 in "${delarray[@]}" { rm -rf $DEST/*$user2* } Not bad for one hours research and work.

uhm, am i missing something or can this be achieved much easier? #!/bin/bash LIST=/path/to/list create() { mkdir $i && chmod 755 $i } for i in `cat $LIST`; do if [ ! -a $i ]; then create echo "created $i" else echo "$i exists" fi done

May want to use "mkdir -p"