Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi

Can I thank the advice I've received on here previously, working examples are helping me teach myself BASH fairly quickly and I've written some pretty complex scripts now (even if I do say so myself).

Anyhooo.....

I'm writing a script that handles lots of text files and does various calculations based on the count of those files and that sort of gumph.

At the moment for example I have sets of lines similar to this:-

Code:

VALUE=`find /path/to/find -iname *.txt | sed -e s'\/\path\/to\/find\///' | wc -l`
VALUE=`expr $VALUE - 1`

I realise the sed is redundant however it's for the example.

I then use this value for just on calculation so the second VALUE= line is a bit of overkill really.

is there some way of coding something like

Code:

VALUE=`expr (find /path/to/find -iname *.txt | sed -e s'\/\path\/to\/find\///' | wc -l) - 1`

So that the line is all self contained and more readable and logical? Is there a general rule/syntax on how you can structure this?

Thanks in advance

Try this,

Code:

VALUE=$(expr $(find /path/to/find -iname *.txt | sed -e s'\/\path\/to\/find\///' | wc -l) - 1)

Or something like this:

Code:

VALUE=$(( $( find /path/to/find -iname *.txt | sed -e s'\/\path\/to\/find\///' | wc -l ) - 1 ))

Thanks guys, it was the use of the $ I wasn't aware of, googling for bash embedded command throws up a LOT of answers that aren't relevant.