Shell Programming and Scripting

I am trying to execute something like this

Code:

file=/tmp/test.txt
firstline=$(head -n 1 $file)
value=`echo $firstline | cut -d'=' -f2`

if [ "$value" -gt "2" ]
then
echo true
fi

i read the first line of a file, cut to the numeric value in the first line and check if it greater than 2

but for some reason the "value" variable doesnt store it as integer.

I get : integer expression expected at the if loop.

cant seem to understand why? If i store a number in value like

value=3 then it works fine. How do i make sure when i do a cut it stores it as integer.

I tried

typeset -i value=`echo $firstline | cut -d'=' -f2`

but that gave me arithmatic operator error.

please advise. Thanks.

---------- Post updated at 10:16 PM ---------- Previous update was at 10:13 PM ----------

i also tried

Code:

if [ $value -gt 2 ]  without the quotes

still same error integer expression expected

Can you please post a sample of the input file, so we can see why it's behaving badly?

thanks for taking the time,

the file has only two lines

Code:

LoggingLevel=0
UseLogFile=No

Code:

$ value=$(sed -n "/^LoggingLevel=/{s/.*=//;p;q;}" file)
$ echo $value
0

If you really must get the value from the first line of the file:

Code:

read value < file
value=${value##*=}

when i do

value=$(sed -n "/^LoggingLevel=/{s/.*=//;p;q;}" file)

it does echo the value 0 from the file.

but the following if statement is still throwing the integer expression expected error

Code:

if [ "$value" -gt "2" ]
then
echo true
fi

Of course, because I didn't give you anything except an alternative way to do what you were already doing! Duh! Sorry!

What shell and OS are you using (please don't say SH in Solaris, because I have no Solaris system to play with!)?

i am on Linux

using korn shell

Code:

echo $SHELL
/usr/bin/ksh

my script begins with

Code:

#!/bin/sh

should it maybe change to #!/bin/ksh ? not sure if that matters.