That depends - among other things - on what is in ~/.profile. One conceivable cause could be: $# is the number of (commandline) parameters the current process got. i.e. Consider this script:

Code:

#! /bin/ksh
echo $#
exit

The following table shows what it would produce if called in the respective way:

Code:

./script         # 0
./script a b     # 2
./script "a b"   # 1
./script ""      # 1

etc.

You called your script without any parameter (as far as i can see) and so the test if (( $# < 1 )) should be true and the then-branch be executed. But inside your ~/profile script you could have a line:

Code:

set "X"

and because you dot-execute the script this makes changes to your current environment, by setting "$1" (the first positional argument) to "X" (notice that instead of "x" any other value would also be possible) - which in turn makes "$#" return 1, not 0 any more.

change your script the following way for debugging:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh
echo "before: $#"
. ${HOME}/.profile
echo "after: $#"
if (( $# < 1 )) ; then
     echo "Invalid parameter(s): Usage: $0 par1"
     exit -1
fi

and run again.

I hope this helps.

bakunin