Shell Programming and Scripting

Maybe the last gets the last and the first gets the first, but you can see it does not work for uncooperative data.

Code:

$ echo 1 2 | read a b c;echo $a-$b-$c
1-2-

You have a different ksh, I can see!

It looks that your ksh is not ksh. If your ksh is ksh then output is 12.2L01. Also zsh give result 12.2L01. But all other about posix shell give nothing.

Code:

echo Application Release 12.2L01 as of Fri Nov 2 22:11:46 EDT 2007 | read a b verno d
DBVer=$(/usr/bin/printf "%7s" $verno)
echo $DBVer   # echo 12.2L01

What to do ?
Download ksh.

How about

Code:

printf "%(%Y-%m-%d+%H:%M:%S)T\n" now

What is output ? If you have ksh93 then output is date.
You can do same always using method which works in all about posix shells.

Code:

read a b verno d <<EOF
$(cat  $AMS/version)
EOF
echo "verno:$verno"

read from pipe is nice but works only in ksh and zsh.

In some environment you need to look

Code:

cd /usr/bin
ls -l  ksh* dash* bash* sh*

and to look which are linked - maybe not real some shell, only about - linked.

It's behaving like old Bourne Shell not Korn Shell.
Is that shebang line the very first line in the script? Anywhere else and it will be ignored.

Seems confused, $a=cat $b=$AMS/version and verno and d are blank ! Commands in a here document are text unless run under meta like `` or $().