Hi...
i am trying to ping my servers .The hostnames are present in a file .They are separated by spaces in the file .
i am doing the following :


a=1
for name in $(cat host2 |cut -d" " -f$a)
do
echo Pinging server $name
ping -c5 $name
a=$a+1
done

It is working with the first name .But after that it stops.The for loop is not taking the next names .
Pls suggest .

I change my increment statement like this .

a=$(($a+1))

But still it is not working .

This ?

for name in $(< host2)
do
echo Pinging server $name
ping -c5 $name
done

it worked ..thanks..