Shell Programming and Scripting

lets say i have a command with arguments i.e.

alt_disk_install -C hdisk1

the argument being hdisk1

this could be differnt depending on what server your on

how could i have this be a variable that refers to this value in a file

something like

alt_disk_install -C valueinfile

so basically i create a file that contains the name of the disk i want to use, and this script refers to that file for its value

Assume you have a single file name that on different boxes has values and the name of the file is /path/to/whatever:

Code:

alt_disk_install -C `cat /path/to/whatever`

A lot of commands will accept their input redirected from a file, e.g.

somecommand < some_file

In your case, however, I think something like

alt_disk_install -C `cat file_name`

would be more appropriate.

Cheers
ZB


EDIT: Sorry Jim, must have been typing my post whilst you were typing yours, hence the overlap in content!

ZB - no problem.

It all depends on whether alt_disk_install is willing to read stdin for the disk name, or whether it expects to get it via getopts() - command line arguments.

If it can only accept one and only one disk name for a command (I think this is true) then chances are it goes with getopts. Anyway, that's my guess.

Here is another option. Assume that I have a script called somescript and it needs a config file. I would call the config file something like somescript.cfg and it would contain stuff like:

THIS="something"
THAT="something else"

The key is that the config file itself is ksh code. Then in the real script I can source it with:
. /path/to/somescript.cfg

Recall that the dot command runs a subscript in the same shell. Now those variable are defined and I can just reference them.