defining ksh variables....

[pmcmicha]

I am writing a script in ksh and I am attempting to do the following, which should be possible.....

#!/bin/ksh -p

if [[ -d /home/someone ]]
then
1=$(echo "Found&quot
else
1=$(echo "Invalid&quot
fi

if [[ -f /test/test1 ]]
then
2=$(echo "Found&quot
else
2=$(echo "Invalid&quot
fi


echo "Now checking for someones directory\t\c" ${1}
echo
echo "Now checking for test file\t\c" ${2}


The problem is that the shell keeps giving me errors stating that 1=Found is not found. Same with 2. I know I could just write the echo statements and then do the test conditions, but I would like to seperate them this time to see how this looks. Is this possible? Thanks.

 

[grega]

OK. A couple of things.

1) It's generally bad practice to use digits as variable names. Remember that arguments passed to a shell script are referred to as $1, $2, $3, ....

2) You don't need to echo a value to a shell variable. Just assign it as with any other language.

3) You don't need the double braces around your if condition.

4) The -c in the echo was causing a problem with the display of the output. It's not really needed any. You can force echo to take a new line using \n , otherwise a single echo statement will display all its arguments on one line.

Given the above comments, your script would now read

#!/bin/ksh

if [ -d /home/someone ]
then
      DIR="Found"
else
      DIR="Invalid"
fi

if [ -f /test/test1 ]
then
      FNAME="Found"
else
      FNAME="Invalid"
fi


echo "Now checking for someones directory\t${DIR}"
echo
echo "Now checking for test file\t${FNAME}"

There's still plenty of room for improvement though Just post back if you have any more queries.

Greg.

 

[pmcmicha]

Thanks for the input. Just so you know, I don't use numbers as variables in my scripts, though when I am typing out an example I use them sometimes.