Shell Programming and Scripting

All I have to say here is that this is the result of a bad coding practice. Indentation helps.

Moreover, experts have repeatedly requested the use of [code] tag.

Code:

if [ I write code like this ];then
    Ppl can help me better
else
    I'll waste a lot of effort and time
fi

The error message means that you have an uneven number of one type of quotes. These could be single quotes, double quotes, or back ticks.

This line for example is suspect. Though the backticks are matched, there are 5 double quote characters. The double quote at the end of the line will cause a syntax error. On re-reading cfajohnson's post I see that he spotted this too and queried the logic!

Code:

61 temp=`ls -lt /root/COMM/LOGS/eds/20081215 | tr -s " " | cut -f6,7,8,9 -d " " `"

This line does not have a syntax problem as such, but does have too many double quotes to be easy to read by eye.

Code:

28 echo "From: "Gnanaprakasam" <gnanaprakasam@yahoo.com>" > $MFILE

28 echo "From: Gnanaprakasam <gnanaprakasam@yahoo.com>" > $MFILE

cfajohnson makes a very good point about using one redirection to $MFILE. It would make the script so much easier to follow. Similarly testing a buggy script as root is not advisible.