Shell Programming and Scripting

I have this script which is very easy:

Code:

file=`echo 01114`
echo $file
01114

then I ran this

Code:

if [ $file -ge 7 ]; then echo "yes";fi

it returned yes even though there are only 5 digits there

So then I tried

Code:

file=`echo abcd`
echo $file
abcd

Code:

if [[ $file -ge 1 ]]; then echo "yes";fi

Code:

if [[ $file -gt 1 ]]; then echo "yes";fi

It did not return anything. How can I check with bash the length of a string of characters? I must be missing something

Try:

Code:

[ "${#file}" -gt 7 ] && echo yes

Note the hash char between the bracket and variable name.

hth

By way of explanation, your code is trying to compare the numeric value of the variable, not the length. The code from sea uses an in-built function to generate the length as a value to compare against, although I would prefer it without the double-quotes. It might work depending on your OS. Some may be picky and complain that you are comparing a string with a numerical operator (the -gt)


I hope that this helps,
Robin