I have a very large scm file that is over 3 million lines long. I am ‘cat’ing it through a telnet port to a virtual server. I need to split the code into its individual lines and feed it into the server. It should send one line and wait a few milliseconds before sending the next line. Ex:
File: (define x (WordNode = "frustration")) n (define x (WordNode = "Anger")) n
…
Input: (define x (WordNode = "frustration")) n sleep 50 ms (define x (WordNode = "Anger")) n sleep 50 ms
…
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Answer
If you can use GNU sleep (which supports sleeping for fractional number of seconds), it’s easy:
#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r line; do
echo "$line"
sleep 0.05
done < file
Or, turn that into a small delay-line utility (more in line with Unix philosophy).
Let’s call it delay.sh (don’t forget to chmod +x delay.sh):
#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r line; do
echo "$line"
sleep 0.05
done
We are reading each line from the standard input, and output it with a delay to the standard output.
Use it, for example, like this:
head -100 file | ./delay.sh | ...
This will take the first 100 lines from file and feed it, one by one, with a delay to the next command in the pipeline (perhaps the telnet you mentioned in your question).
And to “delay” the complete file:
./delay.sh < file
Btw, if your file is 3M lines long (as you claim), bear in mind delaying each line for 50ms will take ~42h.