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Strange Number comparison issue

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# 8  
Old 04-09-2007
ksh on HP-UX uses 32 bit arithmetic and the largest integer it can handle is 2147483648. bc can perform arithmetic on any size number. If a is less than b, then the expression a-b will be negative. Negative numbers will have a minus sign as the first character.

c=$(echo $a - $b | bc)
if [[ $c = -* ]] ; then

In your case, both numbers have the same number of digits. If that is guaranteed to be true, an alpha compare will work:
if [[ $a < $b ]] ; then
This User Gave Thanks to Perderabo For This Post:
cheers799
# 9  
Old 04-10-2007
Hi Perderabo
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perderabo
In your case, both numbers have the same number of digits. If that is guaranteed to be true, an alpha compare will work:
if [[ $a < $b ]] ; then
I tried this and is working fine.. thanks a lot
Between what is this alpha comparison? is it just the string comparison?


Thanks
Shihab
# 10  
Old 04-10-2007
Yes it is. And it should work for you as the string will always be YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.
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