Hi,

I am trying to create a script that will loop through my oratab file and pull out the instance name.

Here is script:

for instance in $(cat /etc/oratab|egrep ':N|:Y'|grep -v \*|grep -v \#|cut -f1 -d':')
do
echo Instance $instance is in the oratab
echo $ORACLE_HOME
done

From what I can tell, it starts another process, why? Then it returns my prompt with no echo output to screen. Then I have to kill the process, now my output shows up after its killed.

What am I missing here?

Thanks,
Kathy

What os are you using? What is your login shell? What command are you using to run your script?

Ideally, your first line should be something like:
#! /usr/bin/ksh
or something like that. Whether or not your script should be able to work without it depends on the answers to the above questions.

AIX 4.3.3
ksh

Its working, now. I was missing the #
in the #! /usr/bin/ksh.

Thanks a bunch,
Kathy

I never noticed that we could do that. But I tried:
false
echo $?
and got a 1. Then I tried:
! false
echo $?
and I got a 0. Very interesting.