First off: you shouldn't, as a beginner, even look at this script: it is very poorly written and if it really does what it is supposed to do this is out of coincidence rather than planned.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

use this shell (KornShell) as commando processor

Code:

PARAMS=$1

This is supposed to put the first parameter passed on command line into the variable "PARAMS", but if this parameters contains blanks this line will fail because the variable declaration is not quoted. Correct would be:

Code:

PARAMS="$1"

Code:

#echo "parms passed is $PARAMS @"

This is a comment (like everything after "#" until the end of the line).

Code:

STATUS=`echo ${PARAMS} | cut -d: -f1`

This (and a lot of similar lines) is a waste of time and system resources. It executes a command (echo $PARAMS | cut -d: -f1) in a subshell ("`...`") and stuffs the output of this command into a variable STATUS. First, the backquotes used for the subshell are deprecated and shouldn't be used any more. Second, it too is not quoted like the first line and therefore prone to failure. To make the construct syntactically correct it should read:

Code:

STATUS="$(echo ${PARAMS} | cut -d: -f1)"

But the whole thing is unnecessary altogether, because what this is supposed to do - cut the content of "$PARAMS" from the beginning to the first ":"
- can be done without a subshell by simple parameter expansion:

Code:

STATUS="${PARAMS%%:*}"

The same goes for all the other lines analogously.

Code:

while [ $EMAIL_ADDRESS > '' ]
do
done

This is simply a syntax error, because [ $EMAIL_ADDRESS > '' ] won't work. Even if it would work, using "$EMAIL_ADDRESS" unquoted would cause a runtime error if the variable contains nothing. If it is supposed to mean "as long as "$EMAIL_ADDRESS" is not empty" (which is my suspicion) it will have to be written:

Code:

while [ -n "$EMAIL_ADDRESS" ]

Add to this that no attempt at error handling is made, parameters are not checked at all and the script has no output. I suggest you throw away this rubbish and try to write a script yourself. Even as a total beginner you will probably create something better than this.

I hope this helps.

bakunin