You can open both files in Perl, which has no line length limits:

{
    my ( $in, $out );
    open $in, '<', $filepath or die $!;
    open $out, '>', $newpath or die $!;
    while (<$in>) {
        # process $_ which is the current line
        $_ = quux($_);
        print $out; # assumes $_ has everything to print now
    }
    close $out or die $!;
    close $in;
}
[download]

Update: After a lot of heat and little light, it seems that what you want is getgrent. If it fails, your /etc/group file is probably broken. See also 'perrldoc User::grent'.

After Compline,
Zaxo

Along the lines of Ryszard's solution, but it puts the print inside the while, like Beatnik suggested, and breaks long lines:

while (<FH>) {
    my $templine = $_;
    while (length $templine > 60) {
        my $substring = substr ($templine, 0, 60);
        print "$substring\n";
        $templine = substr ($templine, 61);
    }
    print "$templine\n";
}
[download]

Note that this is untested code, and I am notorius for screwing up indexes in things like substr, so be sure to check for off by one errors.

Scott
Please see my resume; I am looking for a Bioinformatics Scientist position.

Or much simpler:

while (<>) {
        print "$1\n" while s/^(.{60})//;
        print "$_\n" if $_;
}
[download]

____________
Makeshifts last the longest.

doesnt work ..

doesnt work.. i just get the same line over and over .. ill try and discover the prob..

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $file = '\/etc\/group';

local*FH;
open(FH, $file) || die "Cannot open file: $!";
my @contents = <FH>;
close FH;

print $_ foreach (@contents);
[download]

You can stick a print; inside a while(<FH>) { } to avoid stuffing the memory with file contents...

Greetz
Beatnik
... Quidquid perl dictum sit, altum viditur.

Tried this one .. and i get the first part of the group file that i am matching for if (/steel/) i get steel:!:1: but not the list of users in the group .. basically same problem I personally have because this code is the same as what i wrote

Ahhhh, so you problem isnt reading the file, but matching strings within the file.

I reckon if you post your code, someone may come up with a solution.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w open (FILE,"/home/druid/group"); open (FILE2,">/home/druid/t"); while(<FILE>){ if (/steel/){ print FILE2; } } close FILE; close FILE2;

Try running this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; open my $fh_group, "</etc/group" or die "Cannot open group file"; while (<$fh_group>) { chomp; my ($grp, $pwd, $gid, $users) = split /:/; if ($grp eq $ARGV[0]) { my @users = split /,/, $users; print join $/, @users; } } [download]

Save it to a file, and run it with a command line argument of the group you'd like to check membership for, for example:

perl program.pl steel
[download]

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

But you might want to use *grent:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings 'all';

setgrent;  

while (my ($name, $passwd, $gid, $members) = getgrent) {
    print "$gid: $name: $members\n";
}

endgrent;  

__END__
[download]

The setgrent and endgrent are optional.

Abigail