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I'm trying to extract the MAC address for a wireless card then insert it into a bash script as a VAR variable with an incremental change. So..

$ ifconfig wlan1 | grep HWaddr
wlan1     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr XX:xx:XX:xx:XX:xx

Now I need to command line extract just the XX:xx:XX:xx:XX:xx and add it to the script with a +1 VAR . Which seems pretty straight forward if I can extract just the XX:xx:XX:xx:XX:xx from the grep above. (ie How to increment a variable in bash? )

Can anyone see a roadblock to adding a MAC address as a variable in a bash script? ie without bash thinking the MAC is a string calculation or erroneous command ?

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  • Do you want a bash script to change 11:11:11:11:11:11 to 11:11:11:11:11:12 ?
    – SuB
    Dec 8, 2016 at 14:23
  • If you capture the MAC address into a variable, you won't be able to just increment the variable, as the MAC address is a string. You could take the last 2 digits of the string as a different variable, then increment that, and replace the last 2 digits with it.
    – Arronical
    Dec 8, 2016 at 14:25
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    Yes, please edit your question and explain what you mean by incrementing the MAC address by one. Give a real (or real-looking) example and show us how you'd like to change it.
    – terdon
    Dec 8, 2016 at 14:29

3 Answers 3

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It may be easier to read the MAC from the appropriate file within the sys filesystem. If you call your variable mymac, then:

$ mymac=$(cat /sys/class/net/wlan1/address)

Should work

$ echo "mymac"
XX:xx:XX:xx:XX:xx

It would be possible to increment the value of the last digits with a bit of variable manipulation. This will only work if they are both digits with a value of 98 or less. The following example uses an assumed MAC of 52:1c:53:8b:8f:77.

$ endpair=${mymac##*:}
$ ((endpair++))
$ newmac="${mymac%:*}:${endpair}"
$ echo "Hooray $mymac is now $newmac"
Hooray 52:1c:53:8b:8f:77 is now 52:1c:53:8b:8f:78
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This post on Stack Overflow provides a portable solution (it'll work on Unix, generally, not just Ubuntu), and should provide resiliency if the output format of ifconfig changes (or if it's deprecated/removed and you decide to switch to a different tool).

ifconfig wlan1 | grep -o -E '([[:xdigit:]]{1,2}:){5}[[:xdigit:]]{1,2}'
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  • It might be worth changing eth0 in your code to wlan1 as that's the interface the OP is interested in.
    – Arronical
    Dec 8, 2016 at 15:10
  • Well spotted! I actually had to change it from en0 (testing on a Mac) - embarrassing I made the wrong change...
    – John N
    Dec 8, 2016 at 15:12
  • Although Ubuntu often uses the consistent device naming thing these days so it could be anything like en2p0!
    – Arronical
    Dec 8, 2016 at 15:19
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You need to add more commands for extracting only the MAC Address.

I suggest you use awk and print only the last column, example:

ifconfig wlan1 | grep HWaddr | awk '{ print $5 }'

This command will show only XX:xx:XX:xx:XX:xx, awk print $5 split lines by spaces.

If you want add this result in bash variable, you need apply this command:

myVarName=$(ifconfig wlan1 | grep HWaddr | awk '{ print $5 }')

Then, you use this content with $myVarName.

echo $myVarName
XX:xx:XX:xx:XX:xx
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  • 2
    You can avoid spawning grep by using a pattern in awk: myVarName=$(ifconfig wlan1 | awk ' /HWaddr/ { print $5 }'
    – John N
    Dec 8, 2016 at 14:45

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