if [ "${x_oug}" -ne 0 ]
then
echo "Entry Valid                  :  ${x_oug}"
else
echo "Entry Invalid                  : " 0
fi

echo "Entry Valid                   :   ${x_oug}"
echo "Entry Valid                   :   " ${x_oug}
echo "Entry Valid                   :   $x_oug
echo "Entry Valid                   : " "${x_oug}"

echo "Entry valid                  : 5 "

How are you setting x_oug?

What's the value of x_oug ? How do you assign it? Did you run the script with the xtrace option set?

Thanks for quick replies

I am retriving it from a file which is in fact output of vmstat... eliminating header, awking a particular column values and then getting max of that to set x_oug

x_oug=`cat /u01/zopepx/vmstat1.txt|grep -v kthr|grep -v '-'|grep -v r|awk '{print x7}'|grep -Ev '(#.*$)|(^$)'|grep -v System|awk '{if($1>mx)mx=$1;}END{print mx}'`

You know you can make THAT statement way more legible and efficient?

Pls post output of echo "$x_oug"

Hello

Output remains as following i.d. NULL

Entry valid                  :

I have no idea what you thought you should get out of this, but the awk in the middle of this pipeline ( awk '{print x7}' ) prints an empty line for every line it reads. The two greps that follow that are no-ops, and the awk after that converts one or more empty lines into a single empty line. The ksh test -eq operator is intended to compare two numeric values. Since an empty string is not a numeric value, I'm not sure the results of the comparison are defined, but I expect that ksh will say that [ "" -eq 0 ] evaluates to false rather than giving a syntax error.