BASH + Best method of converting fields to variables

[Matt Morgan]

On 07/16/2004 08:35 PM, Rick Stevens wrote:

> Ow Mun Heng wrote:
>
>> Guys,
>>
>>     Writing a batch_create_new_user script.
>> input is a file with this format
>>
>> Username:Full Name:Default Group:Default Shell:Home Directory:Password
>>  
>> and the using those fields ($1 $2 $3 etc) and passing then to the 
>> useradd program
>>
>> I'm having some trouble getting bash to get the positional fields 
>> into variables which I
>> can then plug into useradd
>>
>> eg:
>> pseudo code
>> for each line in input file
>>   do
>>     username=$1
>>     name=$2
>>     useradd -c "$2" $1
>>   done
>>
>> Can it be done using bash itself? (without calling awk)
>
>
> Not really, because bash delimits fields with spaces, not colons.

Use cut  with -d":" on each line to set the variables?