[LUG]writing shell scripts

[Paul Sutton via list <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

I am trying to write a shell script that when run will read a text file, 
which contains a list e.g

item1
item2
item3

and for now echo the first line to stdout and in the case of what I have 
send to another text file

#display first line of a file
head -n 1 lines.txt > topline.txt
#delete first line of a file
sed -i -e "1d" lines.txt
cat topline.txt 

But I don't think this is at all the correct way to do this.  I am 
trying to find out how,  but

The ultimate aim of will be to

Take a text file or list of urls (lets say Code Club Activities)
Run the script say, every monday at 02:00 am
each time the script is run, it will use the toot (mastodon cli tool) to 
send that url to a Mastodon account.
then the next time it is run,  send the next url in the list.

I think I need to start by identifying the correct way to do this,  then 
write or get help writing the a script to do this.

I should not have a program getting a shell script to run at an allotted 
time each week using cron.

So for example

https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/space-talk
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/catch-the-bus
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/find-the-bug
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/silly-eyes
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/surprise-animation

I had some help before with regard to reading an array containing a list 
of files, which then runs on all entries in the array. However, in this 
case the script will run and act on the first item,   then run again a 
week later and act on the 2nd item.

So it needs a way to track which item to send.

So over a period of 5/6 weeks I send out a different activity each week.

However, I also appreciate that sending out just a url is not very 
friendly or helpful,  so there should be some text wrapped around it.

I could perhaps create a series of text files with url and wrapper text.

Hopefully, this can be run on a Raspberry pi,  and it can just be left 
on and do tasks at allotted times.

Could someone help / advise please.

Thanks for any help


Paul


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Paul Sutton, Cert Cont Sci (Open)
https://zleap.net/
Mastodon : https://techhub.social/@zleap

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