Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: Programming Newbie Chick
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Programming Newbie Chick Post 102515 by dsbeerf on Saturday 18th of March 2006 08:10:34 PM
Old 03-18-2006
I noticed you said you are a programming "newbie" in UNIX. So I think I need to say the following.

The '[' used to be the same as the program "test". It is now a shell builtin, with basically the same function. The '[' character is also recognized by the shells (sh|ksh|bash) as a 'special character', and as such, requires you to 'finish' the syntax with the ']' character. The way to do this is to have the ']' stand-alone, separate (by whitespace) from other characters (or with a 'defined' termination character, like --> '];' ).
THAT is why you got the error you were getting. The shell could not find a terminating ']' character.
The '[' is "test", but also an "open bracket". It needed to find a "close bracket" to complete the syntax.

B.T.W.: the tests for 'y', 'Y', 'yes', 'Yes', or 'YES' could more easily be accomplished with a 'case' statement. Easier to understand, and easier to adjust in the future, too.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Programming

programming question from a newbie, please help

Hi Everyone, I really hope I could get some insight from a few of you, I've been searching the net for various resources, and this board seems to be the friendliest and most helpful by far. I work for a medical research company and we use sun 4 and we have different studies that have their... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: milenky
1 Replies

2. Programming

newbie to unix programming in C, needed a few simple prgs on these functions!

Hi all, I am a newbie to unix programming using C.. So i would like to have a few simple C programs to start off with.. I wanted programs on learning , abort,kill and raise,alarm and pause,I would also like to know how to use the vfork() in a prg It would be really great if i can have... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: wrapster
1 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Carreer:Networking Programming in Unix (C programming Language)

Hello, I am trying to learn Networking Programming in C in unix enviorment. I want to know how good it is to become a network programmer. i am crazy about Network programming but i also want to opt for the best carreer options. Anybody experienced Network Programmer, please tell me is my... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: vibhory2j
5 Replies

4. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

UNIX newbie NEWBIE question!

Hello everyone, Just started UNIX today! In our school we use solaris. I just want to know how do I setup Solaris 10 not the GUI one, the one where you have to type the commands like ECHO, ls, pwd, etc... I have windows xp and I also have vmware. I hope I am not missing anything! :p (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: Hanamachi
4 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

perl newbie . &&..programming newbie (question 2)

Hello everyone, I am having to do a lot of perl scripting these days and I am learning a lot. I have this problem I want to move files from a folder and all its sub folders to one parent folder, they are all .gz files.. there is folder1\folder2\*.gz and there are about 50 folders... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: xytiz
1 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

perl newbie . &&..programming newbie

Hi, I am new to programming and also to perl..But i know 'perl' can come to my rescue, But I am stuck at many places and need help..any small help is much appreciated... below is the description of what i intend to acheive with my script. I have a files named in this format... (13 Replies)
Discussion started by: xytiz
13 Replies

7. Fedora

Newbie at Linux Kernel programming!

Hi Friends, This is my first ever post on this forum. I am a new user in the Linux field. Although, I have been working for sometime with CentOS at my work, I would consider myself an amateur only in this field. :D The way file system works in linux and the reason its open-source, has really... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: rohitrajjain
7 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Newbie needs help with Xlib / X11 programming,dunno who to ask,but you :(

Hi,I'm new here and to Unix also. I'm totall newbie. Here is what I have to do: -Basics of programming user interface with Xlib library -Xlib -Client/Server model of X-Windows system -Example of "Hello world" with button which changes text ,so that when u click displays another... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: megane16v
4 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Programming newbie -help!!

Hi I am trying to learn shell script and i ran into an issue. I am trying to read a file with few directories and tar them up. I used a while loop but i end up overwriting tar file with only the last directory in the file being tared . cat test.txt | ( while read line do tar -czPf... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: SPR
8 Replies

10. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

From iOS programming to Linux system programming

Hello. I like Linux and C programming language. Allways wanted to understand kernel and become a Linux system programmer. And I also like Objective-C and iOS. These two programming areas have relations: 1. Linux and iOS are UNIX-like systems, POSIX compliant. 2. It is useful to know C language... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: Rockatansky
2 Replies
times(1)							   User Commands							  times(1)

NAME
times - shell built-in function to report time usages of the current shell SYNOPSIS
sh times ksh times DESCRIPTION
sh Print the accumulated user and system times for processes run from the shell. ksh Print the accumulated user and system times for the shell and for processes run from the shell. On this man page, ksh(1) commands that are preceded by one or two * (asterisks) are treated specially in the following ways: 1. Variable assignment lists preceding the command remain in effect when the command completes. 2. I/O redirections are processed after variable assignments. 3. Errors cause a script that contains them to abort. 4. Words, following a command preceded by ** that are in the format of a variable assignment, are expanded with the same rules as a vari- able assignment. This means that tilde substitution is performed after the = sign and word splitting and file name generation are not performed. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
ksh(1), sh(1), time(1), attributes(5) SunOS 5.10 15 Apr 1994 times(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:35 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy