I'm trying to write a simple shell script that looks at a given text file and if the only word in the file is 'completed', it launches another shell script.

So far I have this almost working...

if grep 'completed' $datafile
then...

however, using this logic the secondary shell script gets launched if the word shows up anywhere in the file. Is there a way to have the logic key in on only the first word in the file?

grep "^completed" $datafile && /shell/script/to/trigger.sh || echo "completed is not in the first word"

First you want to know if the ONLY word is "completed", later you say if the FIRST word is "completed". Which is it? Could there be multiple lines? Could the word "completed" be anywhere on the line or starting a line? Could there be lines before or after the word "completed"? Could there be error messages instead of the word "completed" that need to be accounted for? Need more info.

zra1:/home/vbe/wks $ echo $CONTENT  

zra1:/home/vbe/wks $ cat test003.txt
completed
zra1:/home/vbe/wks $ cat test003
if [ $(cat test003.txt|wc -w) -eq 1 ]
then 
   echo still OK
   read CONTENT < test003.txt
   if [ "$CONTENT" = "completed" ]
      then echo cool
   fi
else 
   echo not cool
fi
zra1:/home/vbe/wks $ ./test003
still OK
cool
zra1:/home/vbe/wks $ 

zra1:/home/vbe/wks $ cat test003.txt
completed
blahblah
zra1:/home/vbe/wks $ ./test003
not cool