Search .netrc file in bash, and return username for given machine

Question

I need a way (the most portable) in bash, to perform a search of the ~/.netrc file, for a particular machine api.mydomain.com and then on the next line, pull the username value.

The format is:

machine a.mydomain.com
  username foo
  passsword bar
machine api.mydomain.com
  username boo
  password far
machine b.mydomain.com
  username doo
  password car

So, it should matchin api.mydomain.com and return exactly boo from this example.

awk '/api.mydomain.com/{getline; print}' ~/.netrc

Get's me the line I want, but how do I find the username value?

Answer 1

$ awk '/api.mydomain.com/{getline; print $2}' ~/.netrc
boo

To capture it in a variable:

$ name=$(awk '/api.mydomain.com/{getline; print $2}' ~/.netrc)
$ echo "$name"
boo

By default, awk splits records (lines) into fields based on whitespace. Thus, on the line username boo, username is assigned to field 1, denoted $1, and boo is assigned to field 2, denoted $2.