Extract a sub-array by using a distinguished row s

Question

I have some command lines stored in a text file, and I separated them into different groups by using distinguished row symbol, say #step1 for group one, #step2 for group two,etc. My question is how I'm able to extract each group and execute each command line by using #step* as an input argument.

steps text file:

#step1
command line 1
command line 2
command line 3
...
#step2
command line 4
command line 5
command line 6
...

How to create a function somewhere in my code context, which can do something like:

execSteps "#step1"

or is there another way to organize my steps text file?

Any ideas?

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

It sounds like you just want to define a shell "module". Save it as mymodule:

step1 () {
    command line 1
    command line 2
    command line 3
}

step2 () {
    command line 4
    command line 5
    command line 6
}

To use it, simply source it from your script, and call the desired function

. mymodule
# Run step 1
step1

# Run step 2

Answer 2

One approach:

getSteps() {
  local running=0
  while read -r line; do
    if (( running )); then
      if [[ $line = "#"* ]]; then
        return
      else
        printf '%s\n' "$line"
      fi
    else
      [[ $line = "#"$1 ]] && running=1
    fi
  done <stepFile
}

execSteps() {
  getSteps "$@" | sh -
}

Then, you can print the code for a step by running getSteps step1, or execute that code with execSteps step1.