Extracting line from crontab using grep or something similar

Question

How can I use grep to extract a line from a crontab file and store it to a variable? This is not working:

CTMP=$(crontab -l | grep $SCRIPT)

$SCRIPT is another variable defined within the program. Example anm.sh which is what I am searching for in the crontab to identify the line I need to extract.

Thanks!

* UPDATE *

Its doing something very strange. I tried this:

CTMP=$(crontab -l | grep "anm.sh")

This is what my crontab looks like:

*/17 * * * * cd /home/administrator/anm-1.5.0 && ./anm.sh

However when I echo out CTMP it randomly has a bunch of info that makes no sense. Somehow its pulling the names of directories in the current working directory. Here was the output:

*/17 anm.cfg anm.sh databases logs tmp anm.cfg anm.sh databases logs tmp anm.cfg anm.sh databases logs tmp anm.cfg anm.sh databases logs tmp cd /home/administrator/anm-1.5.0 && ./anm.sh

Those directory names do exist, but why the heck is it pulling those directory names???

All I need to do is get that line from the crontab file stored to the variable CTMP

Thanks

Are you sure you're listing the content of the right crontab? Each user has it's own. You're line of code seems ok to me. — Alessandro Da Rugna, Jun 24 '13 at 08:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 24 '13 at 08:52

2

I think the problem is in the ECHO statement.

The variable is filled right when you do crontab -l | grep "anm.sh":
CTMP="*/17 * * * * cd /home/administrator/anm-1.5.0 && ./anm.sh"

echo $CTMP
<<bunch of dir names>>

echo "$CTMP"
*/17 * * * * cd /home/administrator/anm-1.5.0 && ./anm.sh

quote the variable when echoing.

answered Jun 24 '13 at 08:52

Alessandro Da Rugna

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That did it! Thank you! Now I just need to figure out the bigger issue I'm having with my sed command that handles this variable. Maybe you can take a look at this one too. Here is the bigger question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17267904/cron-job-not-being-updated – Atomiklan Jun 24 '13 at 08:57

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 24 '13 at 08:40

0

You probably want to turn off globbing (the asterisks are being interpreted).

Probably, you should also use quotes.

CTMP="$(set -f; crontab -l | grep 'anm.sh')"

answered Jun 24 '13 at 08:40

Marki

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@Marki - you've identified the cause of the problem, but you need to suppress globbing when CTMP is expanded (i.e. by $CTMP) ... not when it is set. – Stephen C Jun 24 '13 at 11:21
@StephenC you're completely right. I had globbing already suppressed in the main shell therefore it worked on my box. Duh. – Marki Jun 24 '13 at 12:24

Extracting line from crontab using grep or something similar

2 Answers2