I am trying to use two files and walk through the first one to see if a value from each record resides in the other file.

I am reading the file record by record and awking out the first field into a varaiable. That is working fine.

When I try to write my grep command it gives me an error.

cat $DSFILE | while read a
do
itemno=`echo $a | awk -F"|" '{print $1}'`
echo $itemno
if [ /usr/bin/grep \<$itemno\> $BNFILE ] ; then
echo "yes"
else
echo "no"
fi
done

When I run it I get:

--AA--06GR-741Z
+ [ /usr/bin/grep <--AA--06GR-741Z> /export/home/abc.before ]
./DS.skps.ksh[11]: <--AA--06GR-741Z>: unknown test operator
+ echo no

I tried the -w option too and it doesn't give me a result.

I must be having a brain cramp because I know I've done this somehow before.

thanks