Shell Programming and Scripting

At your normal prompt where $RANDOM is working:

Code:

echo $SHELL

Whatever that comes out try putting that in the shebang line in your script.

try:

bash test.sh
or
ksh test.sh

Thanks. It fixes the immediate problem, but I'm curious as to why the RANDOM variable doesn't work inside the script, and I didn't fully understand the symlink explanation. Can you elaborate?

To paraphrase the earlier poster, when you type "sh" in your particular version of Linux you actually get "dash" because "sh" is a symbolic link to "dash".
In your case you probably needed to specify "bash".

In older unixes "sh" gave you the Bourne Shell but in most modern mainstream unixes "sh" gives you the Posix Shell. There is even more variation in Linux.

I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm using /bin/bash, and doing:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
i=$RANDOM
echo $i
i=`expr $i + 1`
echo $i

Works just fine..

---------- Post updated at 09:45 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:45 PM ----------

I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm using /bin/bash, and doing:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
i=$RANDOM
echo $i
i=`expr $i + 1`
echo $i

Works just fine..

@methyl - Thanks

@eclipseagent - My code was the same as yours and wasn't working. I finally realized that I had been forgetting to do `chmod +x <filename>'! It works now. Thanks for helping me work out such an obvious error :P

Actually.. i looked at yours and you had backticks ( ` ) in `$RANDOM`, which means you're trying to run the command.. which you wouldn't want to do.