Shell Programming and Scripting

Since I could not test your script not knowing what is being grepped, I added for test purpose what is commented so you can try the increment and so validate your syntax.
I was very sollicitated yesterday and was very tired at the end of day so did not realise that your code had that issue ( since I added an increment in second loop...):
Once entering second loop, you have no means to change your proc_num value!
In fact the afftectation should be also in the second loop:

Code:

.
.
      while (( $proc_num < 5 ))
      do
         echo "loop 2: "proc_num=$proc_num
         sleep 2
         yourscript &      #add a single process,  ampersand necessary?
         #sleep 1 # - this is for testing purpose... -#
         #let proc_num=$proc_num+1
         proc_num=$(ps a | grep yourscript | wc -l) # otherwise in will never get out...
      done
.
.
done

thanks every body!!

---------- Post updated at 07:13 AM ---------- Previous update was at 07:12 AM ----------