Bash shell scripting question....

[Superwormy]

Below is my shell script... I just can't get it to fill in the $username var in the perl commands I want to execute. It should end up running a command like this:

perl -i -e 's/keithpalmerjr/KeithPalmerJr/g' /etc/gshadow

But instead, I get one of these two, depending on how I muss with the code trying to get it to work:
perl -i -e 's///g' /etc/gshadow
perl -i -e 's/$lowercase_username/$username/g' /etc/gshadow

What am I doing wrong?



== bash function ==

mixedcase_user_to_lowercase()
{
username=$1

echo "Operating on user: $username"

echo " Converting $username to lowercase..."
lowercase_username=`echo $username | tr A-Z a-z`
echo " Converted to $lowercase_username"

echo " Adding user $lowercase_username"
`adduser -m $lowercase_username`

echo " Running gigantic perl command for user $lowercase_username"
`perl -i -e 's/$lowercase_username/$username/g' /etc/passwd`
`perl -i -e 's/$lowercase_username/$username/g' /etc/shadow`
`perl -i -e 's/$lowercase_username/$username/g' /etc/group`
`perl -i -e 's/$lowercase_username/$username/g' /etc/gshadow`
`mv /home/$lowercase_username /home/$username`
`chown -R $username:$username /home/$username`

echo ""
}

 

[Thyme]

you shouldn't need to surround your commands with backticks (unless you're assigning them to a variable). That might do it if it's handling the backticked string without interpreting.

 

[Superwormy]

Lines like this work:

perl -i -e "s/$lowercase_username/$username/g" /etc/gshadow

 

[xtknight]

perl -i -e 's/'$lowercase_username'/'$username'/g' /etc/passwd

What about like that? (put ' around variable names?) I haven't tested it. I don't know what it's supposed to do, but it looks like it's executing this if I echo it:

perl -i -e s/asdf/asdf/g /etc/passwd