Loop through file to count field number

Question

I have a script bash to add users from a .txt file. It is really simple:

name firstname uid gid

space separated values

I want to check

Answer 1

Subtle changes to your script would do

result=$(awk -F' ' 'BEGIN{flag=1}NF!=4{flag=0;exit}END{print flag}' "$file")
[ ${result:-0} -eq 0 ] && echo "Problematic entries found in file"

The approach

• set the flag to 1 hoping that every record would contain 4 fields.
• check if record actually contains 4 fields, if not set flag to zero and exit.
• And exit would skip the rest of the input and go to the END rule.
• print the flag and store it in result.
• Check the result and proceed with the action course.