Hi,
I am parsing a file and getting a line number and reading it into a variable

cat abd.tx | grep -n "Stopped" | cut -d ":" -f1 | read linenum

Bascially that will give me the line num where the word "stopped" occured.

Now I want to find what is that line number or the word never occured. I am trying to write an IF condition after this

If the linenum has a value
then
echo process stopped
else
echo process has not stopped

but when I try to write the usuall syntax

if [ -n $linenum ]


Then in either case, that is, whether the word occured or not it still evaluates it as not a null value. Under no circumstance it takes it as a null value.

So I changed the if to

if [ $linenum -gt 0 ]

or

if [ $linenum -ne 0 ]


In both cases it says ARGUMENT expected. Either I don't know what it reads when the word doesnt occur or I dont know how to compare the string. Anything else but -n and -z gives me the argument error.

I don't get why you need a line number at all.

grep 'Stopped' abd.txt |\
while read whole_rec
do
      # play around with the whole record here
done

Firstly the word can occur has many times as possible. Also I am not interested in the line. I want the linenum. Is the word occured then all information after that line to the end of the file. If it didnt occur then then entire file.

Thanks for your quick response though

I think you want

if [ -z $linenum ]