hi,

can sameone please help me where i want to create a script that create a table out of the information in the /etc/passwd file.

the format of the output as below.

User Name User ID Group ID Home
-- ----
phgct 123 20 /home/phgct
...

i have try using cat /ect/passwd | awk....
don't know how to do with the awk.

samebody help me pls.

thank.

chui

There are a lot of examples on how to do this on the internet. Here is a script I used years ago that reads the password file and presents the fields.

#!/bin/ksh

Clear=$(tput clear)
typeset -x PrintLine
typeset -x -L1 -u Response
typeset -xi LineCounter=1
typeset -x -L10 UserName z

PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/etc

#######################
PrintHeader() #
#######################

{

print " User name GECOS Data"
print -----"
LineCounter=4

}

#########################
# Main
#########################

if [ -L /tmp/LstUsers.$$ ];then
rm /tmp/Lstusers.$$
fi

/bin/sort -u /etc/passwd > /tmp/LstUsers.$$
exec 3< /tmp/LstUsers.$$
LineCounter=1
IFS=:,
while read -u3 UserName NotUsed NotUsed NotUsed GECOSData NotUsed ; do
if [ $LineCounter -eq 1 ];then
print "$Clear"
PrintHeader
fi
if [[ -z $GECOSData ]];then
GECOSData="******** No data in the GECOS field ********"
fi
PrintLine=" $UserName\t$GECOSData "
print "$PrintLine"
(( LineCounter=LineCounter+1 ))
if [ $LineCounter -eq 23 ];then
print "\nPress the <RETURN> to the continue to the next screen"\
"or q to QUIT \c"
read Response
if [ $Response = "Q" ];then
exec 3<&-
/bin/rm /tmp/LstUsers.$$
fi
(( LineCounter=1 ))
fi
done

exec 3<&-
/bin/rm /tmp/LstUsers.$$

Feel free to modify it to suit your needs. It doesn't use 'awk' or 'cat' or 'more' to format the data.

If you're still using bash and you want just the fields you specified:

#!/bin/bash
fmt="%-16s %5s %5s %s\n"
printf "$fmt" "User" "uid" "gid" "Home"
while read ; do
line=${REPLY// /f1ll3r}
line=${line//::/:f1ll3r:}
declare -a l=(${line//:/ })
printf "$fmt" "${l[0]}" "${l[2]}" "${l[3]}" "${l[5]}"
done < /etc/passwd

phgct, looks like an assignment question to me