UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

someone please help me out here.

i am not a newbie. i just haven't posted on this board in years. i'm talking at least two and a half years. My last user name was TRUEST. i couldn't log into this name because i forgot my password and my aol email address has long been deleted.

anyway, i'm trying run this command to tell me if what is stored in a variable contains a number or not.

if [ -z $string ]

is that correct?

the actual script is this:

#!/bin/sh
result="`ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep loader | awk '{print $2}'`"
if [ "$result" -eq "0" ]
then
sleep 3
/apps/scripts/restart_feed.sh loader
echo "News_Loader Was Restarted On `date`"
echo " "
fi


the line with result. i'm trying to see if the variable result contains a number or an empty space. i'm running this on a Linux box. i know this stuff but i haven't scripted in so long i have forgotten a lot of things

i think you can use some thing like

#!/bin/sh
if [ ! -n "$(ps -ef|grep [l]oader)" ];then
sleep 3
/apps/scripts/restart_feed.sh loader
echo "News_Loader Was Restarted On `date`"
echo " "
else
echo "Loader is already running"
fi