I'm surprised that bash ran this script without complaining about the missing " in the line:

Code:

echo "IT = $IT >> outfile #this value is blank, don't understand why

Your code would be easier to read if you would use indentation to make the structure obvious.

The braces ({ and }) in your code are unnecessary, but shouldn't affect the behavior of this script.

You could simplify some of your code by redirecting the output of the while loop instead of redirecting the output of each command in the loop, but that shouldn't affect the output produced by this script either.

What is the name of your script? What are the permissions on your script? How did you invoke your script?

If every line in file1 matches a line in file2 when using the command:

Code:

grep -i <entry_from_file1> file2

and you add the missing quote in:

Code:

echo "IT = $IT" >> outfile #this value is blank, don't understand why

and your script is executable, and you invoke it with something like the command:

Code:

./YourScriptName file1 file2

it seems like you should get something in outfile as long as file1 and file2 do not contain any whitespace characters. (If they do contain whitespace characters and you quoted them appropriately when you invoked your script, your script is still missing quotes around uses of "$1" and "$2" (but, again, if that is the problem, bash should have given you syntax errors).

What does "this value is blank" mean? Is there no output in outfile from the echo? Is there output from each echo, but it is just IT = ? What is in outfile when your script completes?

Please explain how this script is behaving differently than you expect.

Please explain what you expect this script to do.

Please show us what the script is doing?

Please answer the questions I asked in post #2 in this thread.

Does the grep command I suggested in post #4 in this thread produce any output? If so, is it suitable for the main body of your report?