Shell Programming and Scripting

You can use the returncode of fuser, no need to parse the pid.

Code:

while fuser /path/to/your/file >/dev/null; do
   sleep 5
done

Hi Cero,

I have tried your advice, but the program is still falling into the while loop while the file is not running... See the following. I guess, the path to my program returned by fuser may causing the problem with the while loop.

108 [shivalpl1] dbadm % fuser /home/dbadm/myprog
/home/dbadm/myprog:

109 [shivalpl1] dbadm % prog
/home/dbadm/myprog:
Still running
/home/dbadm/myprog:
Still running
/home/dbadm/myprog:
^C

Regards

Strange. Is /home/dbadm/myprog the file beeing accessed?
What does echo $? show right after executing fuser on the file?
Also add set -x at the beginning of your script to see what happens.