Shell experiments

These are a few shell scripts I’ve written. Maybe one will make you 🤔.

speak.sh

This short script takes a text file as an argument and reads it to you. You will need to install espeak for this to work.

sudo apt install espeak

#!/bin/bash
FILE=$1
while read LINE; do
    echo "$LINE"
    espeak -v en-uk -s 145 -p 42 -a 200 "$LINE"
done < $FILE

If you think you’ve heard that voice before, you might have. I tried to tune espeak to be as close as possible to SCP-079. Here’s a text file for you to try it out on.

text file

Static site generator

This script queries the MovieDB API to search a keyword and return a list of relevant movies. I ended up creating one atrocity of a JSON parser with sed but it works great. I was inspired to make this after making a site using lowdown and ssg5, another (much better) static site generator.

script

sed

atoms.sh

I did some experimenting with postscript using groff. This script makes a postscript document with the atomic structure of different states of matter. It also automatically generates a PDF as long as you have ps2pdf installed.

groff

#!/bin/bash

# Written by Sean Smith
# Date: 12/9/2020
# This program generates a PostScript document that illustrates the atomic
# structure of the different states of matter. Every time the program is run
# a random patern of atoms will exist in the liquid and gas diagrams.
# They change every time you run the program!

FILENAME=$1
CIRCLE="\D\'c.12i\'"


if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
    echo "ERROR: No argument!"
    echo "This program takes one argument, the name of the file you want to generate"
    echo "Example: \"./gen.sh file\" will generate file.ps and file.pdf"
    exit 1
fi

echo "Generating $FILENAME.pdf"

FILE=$FILENAME.troff
#remove file if it already exists
rm $FILE

#create the header
echo "\.ps 24" >> $FILE
echo "\.vs 16" >> $FILE
echo "\.ce" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "Sean Smith    \\\" This file was generated by a script" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "\.ps 16" >> $FILE
echo "Atoms arranged in the three states of matter" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE

#prepare to create the diagrams
echo "\.ps 20" >> $FILE
echo "\.vs 7" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE    #spacer
echo "" >> $FILE    

#generate solid state of matter matrix
echo "Solid" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
for (( j=0; j<12; j++)) 
do
    for (( i=0; i<12; i++ ))
    do
        echo $CIRCLE >> $FILE
    done
    echo "" >> $FILE
done

echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE    #spacer 
echo "" >> $FILE

#generate liquid state of matter matrix
echo "Liquid" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
for (( j=0; j<12; j++)) 
do
    for (( i=0; i<12; i++ ))
    do
        #gen random number
        if [ $((RANDOM%2)) == 0 ]
        then
        echo $CIRCLE >> $FILE
    else
        echo "\ \ " >> $FILE
        fi
    done
    echo "" >> $FILE
done

echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE    #spacer

#generate gaseous state of matter matrix
echo "Gas" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
echo "" >> $FILE
for (( j=0; j<8; j++))  
do
    for (( i=0; i<12; i++ ))
    do
        #gen random number
        if [ $((RANDOM%5)) == 0 ]
        then
        echo $CIRCLE >> $FILE
        echo "\ " >> $FILE
    else
        echo "\ \ " >> $FILE
        fi
    done
    echo "" >> $FILE
    echo "" >> $FILE
done

#turn the troff file into a PostScript file, then compile it into a PDF
groff $FILE > $FILENAME.ps && ps2pdf $FILENAME.ps

echo "Document complete!"

exit 1