I agree with both of you regarding your comments and i will post a more detailed response shortly.

---------- Post updated at 01:35 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:34 PM ----------

Now i have to post another response to allow me to send URL's in my detailed response :-)

---------- Post updated at 01:38 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:35 PM ----------

ok more detailed coming next this forum software must have a bug as i have edited the offending URL add in my detailed post and it still will not let me post. Lets try again.

---------- Post updated at 01:40 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:38 PM ----------

Ok here is what i have gone with now;

Code:

#!/bin/bash
clear
srvice=("plexmediaserver" "plexconnect" "plexpy" "nzbdrone" "couchpotato" "headphones" "utserver" "qbittorrent-nox" "HTPC-Manager" "sabnzbdplus" "webmin");

for i in "${srvice[@]}";  do
   systemctl is-active $i > /dev/null 2>&1
   state=$(systemctl is-active $i >/dev/null && echo Alive || echo Dead)
   #state="${state/failed/inactive}"
   printf "%-18s : %-20s\n" "${i^}" "${state^}"
done

---------- Post updated at 09:15 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:40 PM ----------

Interestingly I have found that much of the script isn't needed with conky, however, it has been a valuable learning experience.

---------- Post updated at 09:16 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:15 PM ----------

Hi bakunin, thank you for your comments and suggestions. I agree with your comments. I tend to notarize my scripts so that years later I do understand what I was doing at the time when I put the script together and also as technology evolves I can update it and make it better or more streamlined or reduce the number of processes as Stomp demonstrated.

Being reasonably new to the NIX platform and coding within it and I don't often need to do a lot of coding, I thought I would attempt to put good scripts together from the outset. I also have to mentioned of all the scripting languages I have used over the years BASH is fantastic and fast becoming my favorite - I do also like JavaScript.

Thanks for the comments and examples using sed - i didn't know you could do that - very valuable and i will be using that in future also.

Regarding printf - whilst putting this script together, i have been doing a lot of reading and looking at different examples around the internet and have found this command to be very powerful and prefer to keep scripts as super simple as possible and certainly where possible would prefer to use printf for formatting rather than adding another process of command into the logic. I was having trouble getting the syntax correct using printf (obviously my lack of knowledge and understanding) hence the reason I first attempted with sed.