I hope one of you smart people out there can help me with what seems like a real simple questing but I can't quite figure out.

In a script I am doing a cmp on two files. I am trying to check the exit status with an if statement but can't seem to figure out the syntax. If the exit status is 1 I want to do something else something else. I am using Solaris 8 and my shell is ksh.

Hi,
As far as I know any unix command returns a return code. Depending on the shell you use the check may slightly differ.

If you are using ksh - The following should work

....your command here....
rtrncd=$?
if [ $rtrncd -ne 0 ]
then
echo problems # problem happened
exit $rtrncd # exit with the same bad return code
fi
# no problems happened - Continue with your scrip
....possibly more code here....

Hope this helps

Well I do not get the errors I was getting. Here is what I have in the script followed by the error message.

#!/usr/bin/ksh

cmp file1 file2

rtrncd=$?

if [$rtrncd -ne 0 ] then
cat error-message-file | mailx -s "Error `date`" email address
exit $rtrncd
fi

The error I get is
check_rep2.sh[7]: syntax error at line 11 : 'fi' unexpected


Mike

You need spaces around [ and ] and also "then" is a separate command...you must put it on a new line or use a semicolon.

if [ $rtrncd -ne 0 ] ; then

That's it. Thanks for the help.

Mike