[denise_0006]

Hi
I have a file like this:
FirstName LastName:Address:Phone number
Using the : as delimiter

I want to add users to this file with the same info. how do i check if there is repetition?
just for the first name. i realized grep uses white space as delimiter.. but the full name with always have a white space!
i stored the full name in the variable FNAME
like this:
echo "Enter full name"
read FNAME

if [ -n "FNAME" ] then -- this means FNAME is not empty
for FN in `grep $FNAME in userinfo.txt | awk -F: '{print $1}'`

....
BODY
....

anyways, this will never be true for the grep part coz it treats the space as a different thing. and i want the full name

so i tried using two variables
FNAME for firstname and LNAME for lastname
...
...
for FN in `grep $FNAME?$LNAME.....` ......
or
for FN in `grep $FNAME[:space:]$LNAME ...`
or
for FN in `grep $FNAME[[:space:]]$LNAME ...`
or using double and single quotes in
for FN in `grep "$FNAME?$LNAME" ...` or '$FNAME?$LNAME '

all don't work.. HELP PLEASE
VERY MUCH APPRECIATED

[Squashman]

Been a while since I have done shell scripting, but your question may be better served in the Unix/Linux forum below.
You can report your post and ask to have the moderators move it to that category.

I guess I am not quite understanding how you want to check for repetition? Do you want to check to see if the full name is already there or do you just want to check for the first name is the same? Not sure if you need to put the delimiter in the AWK statement in single quotes.

I wouldn't necessarily say grep uses space as a delimiter. It will find stuff you are searching for inside other words.