Script to count words matching pattern C shell

Question

I wrote this script which counts occurrences of particular pattern in a given file. However if text file contains square brackets or curly braces shell outputs a message "Missing }". Here is the script:

#!/bin/csh
@ count=0
   foreach word ( `cat test` )
    if (`echo $word | egrep -c 'int'`) then
      @ count= $count + 1
    endif
   end
echo $count

Answer 1

You need to quote the expansion of word: echo "$word".

If you just want to be able to count multiple occurrences on a single line (since grep -c only counts lines that have at least one match), use tr to change normal whitespace to newlines (then you can use grep -c):

(tr ' \t' '\n\n' | fgrep -c int) < test

Also, scripting csh is usually going to cause more problems than it is worth. Despite their own historical quirks, Bourne shells are much nicer to script. Go for dash if you want to make sure your code is portable. Go with bash, ksh, or zsh if you need more power.

csh% echo "foo \"bar\" \$ dollar"
csh: Unmatched ".

sh$ echo "foo \"bar\" \$ dollar"
foo "bar" $ dollar