Shell Programming and Scripting

I am trying to figure out how to run the below variable assignment in a shell script so that it will snuff the "no such file or directory" and just pass the count value. That way I can do a valid compare in the next step.

Code:

num=`ls /appsrv/tmp/PrjRefData_20090428-*_in.xml | wc -l`

ls: PrjRefData_20090428-*_in.xml: No such file or directory
0

I have tried various redirection but can't seem to figure it out. This obviously only happens when the ls returns no matches.

Any assistance is appreciated. Thanks

use this

Code:

num=`ls /appsrv/tmp/PrjRefData_20090428-*_in.xml 2>/dev/null | wc -l`

cheers,
DevaraJ Takhellambam

in my test, simply redirecting stderr of the ls command to /dev/null achived this:

num=`ls /appsrv/tmp/PrjRefData_20090428-*_in.xml 2>/dev/null | wc -l`

you could also add some code after the ls to see the return code is non-zero ($?), but it seems from testing the above that this is not nessesary as the above line set num to 0 for that example.

This is what you could add, as the very next line of execution, for reduntant error checkig, or an alternate solution:

if [ $? ne 0 ]
then
num=0
fi

Thanks all! That solution will work perfect.