Shell Programming and Scripting

This is a continuation of what started off as a few questions here and here for a script i've been working on, i've had final exams since then so had to drop it for a while, I worked out the last problems and now have a few new ones.

here is my script so far.

The main problem i need to work out is how to get $appname (something like "Dock Clicker (5).app") split into the stuff before the (5).app ($name) and stuff between the () ($number)

If it helps, the purpose of this script is to be the executable file for a cocoa bundle that increments a number in it's name every time it is executed.

Any other suggestions for enhancements on the rest of the script would be welcome also :-)

I'm not sure that I understand, but does this help?

$ x="Dock Clicker (5).app"
$ name=${x%\(*}
$ temp=${x#$name\(}
$ number=${temp%\)*}
$ echo $name
Dock Clicker
$ echo $number
5
$ ((newnumber=number+1))
$ echo $newnumber
6
$

This is ksh code. But this stuff should work in any posix shell. It's not going to work if you're using the bourne shell. If you are, you really should switch to a more modern shell. ksh is approaching it's 20th birthday.

You can use the # and % trick to get rid of basename and dirname too.

You will have to maintain a file that is writable by whatever user or group will run the script.

Your code does a "cd ../../" to go up two levels, and that directory and whatever filename you choose to place in there is what I'm talking about. The file keeps count for you. Unix isn't like Windows - there is no Registry.

Let's ignore concurrency issues for now (file locking). You'll need help with that later on.

Do you want a current running count of the processes extant on the system - or just a running count of how many times the script has been executed since day one?

Can i ask where you guys leant that, and what is it for?(the script) what are you doing?

Would it be much to switch the script to bash? would that better? I only have experience with sh, tcsh and bash. An Mac OS X doesn't come with ksh installed, i could include it in the bundle though that would be ugly seeing as i'd still need another executable to find the path to it (i think), can a shebang be something like #! ../ksh ?

and what might that trick be?

Couldn't quite make sense of all of that. I'm on a mac and this is meant to be a cocoa bundle I'm making (if that means anything to you). I just want the script to update the number in the bundle's (.app) name whatever it might be, which means the user can reset it to whatever they want without having to open it up (simply by renaming it).