Shell Programming and Scripting

Greetings!

Here's what I believe is a "simple one" for the community tonight

What I'm trying to do is assign a "true/false" value to a variable depending upon whether a named process (some-process) exists; and then test for this value in the succeeding logic. I banged my head against the wall forever this afternoon trying to get it right:

Code:

$value = '$(pgrep some-process | wc) -gt 0';

if ($value)
{
  do something;
}

else
{
  do something else;
}
.
.
.

Can't quite get the syntax here. Anyone have a quick moment?

Thanks --

EDIT:
Looking @ pgrep a little closer, would something like this work just as well (or better):

Code:

'$(pgrep some-process > /dev/null)';

1. Use backticks (or the system keyword) to execute shell commands
2. grep has a -c switch that will give a count of matching lines for each input file.

Code:

$value = `pgrep -c some_process`;
($value > 0) ? ($value = 1) : ($value = 0);

if ($value) {
  do_something;
}
else {
    do_something_else;
}

Thanks for the tips, balajesuri. All tucked away for safe keeping