Monday, 9.50pm
Sheffield, U.K.
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it’s done. – Scott Adams
Sometimes I feel like much of what I write is too theoretical.
It’s all very well exploring ideas but what are you actually doing?
As Jay Abraham writes, people don’t need strategies. They need solutions.
The world is full of solutions – some of them very complex and many of them solve problems that have been solved before.
Take a simple thing – managing a database.
A database, in its simplest form is like a box of index cards.
Each card is a record and you write stuff on it.
Now, you can get very excited about big, complex databases but in the Unix world a text file can be a database where you use a line for each record.
Interestingly, I strugged to find any applications that would let me create a simple personal database that I could use – for example to maintain a contact database or customer relationship management (CRM) tool.
Odd, I thought.
Back when I was young, my dad let me help him create a database for a medical conference. I can remember showing the visiting doctors their data on the screen and checking if it was right.
This was on an old IBM PC/XT using some version of dBase, I imagine.
Anyway… you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find something that lets you manage a text file as a simple database – that lets you do the basic operations: create, read, update and delete on the files.
Now, of course you can just open the file and edit away, but that’s no fun.
So today’s diversion was to create a small crm. That’s a bit like taking time off from chopping down a tree to work on sharpening the axe.
If you’re being generous, that is.
On the other hand, it’s possibly a complete waste of time, implementing something widely available in a way no one else might ever use.
But here’s the thing.
I’ve found the Internet and the stuff other people have put out there immensely useful in all the work I do.
So, maybe sharing this bit of code, unfinished as it is, may be useful to you as well. Apologies for the formatting – tired of struggling with WordPress!
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
#!/bin/bash
# Script to manage a simple crm
# It's going to be as terse as ed
crmfile=$1
# Setup file
if [ ! -f $crmfile ]; then
echo "Name:Company:Phone:Email:Next Action" > $crmfile
fi
while [ "$command" != "q" ]
do
read command
case $command in
q)
exit 0
;;
h)
echo "Commands"
echo "q: exit"
echo "a: add record"
echo "r: show records"
echo "e: edit record"
echo "d: delete record"
;;
a)
echo "Full name:"
read fullname
echo "Company:"
read company
echo "Phone:"
read phone
echo "email:"
read email
echo "Next action:"
read nextaction
echo "Write to file? (y/n)"
read confirm
if [ "$confirm" = y ]; then
echo $fullname":"$company":"$phone":"$email":"$nextaction >> $crmfile
fi
;;
r)
cat $crmfile | column -s":" -t | less -NS
;;
d)
echo "Line to delete?"
read line
sed -i -e $line"d" $crmfile
;;
e)
echo "Line to edit?"
read line
sed -n -e 1,$line"p" $crmfile | column -s":" -t
str=$(sed -n -e $line"p" $crmfile)
IFS=":" read -r -a NAMES <<< "$str"
fullname=${NAMES[0]}
company=${NAMES[1]}
phone=${NAMES[2]}
email=${NAMES[3]}
nextaction=${NAMES[4]}
#echo $fullname $company $phone $email $nextaction
echo "Press enter to keep existing values"
echo "Full name:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
fullname="$value"
fi
echo "Company:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
company=$value
fi
echo "Phone:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
phone=$value
fi
echo "email:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
email=$value
fi
echo "Next action:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
nextaction=$value
fi
echo "Write to file? (y/n)"
read confirm
string=$fullname":"$company":"$phone":"$email":"$nextaction
echo "Current entry"
if [ "$confirm" = y ]; then
ed - $crmfile <<EOF
$line
c
$string
.
w
q
EOF
fi
echo "Record changed. Press r to show"
;;
esac
done
Handcrafted insight 