Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi Guys,
Need help. I am using ISQL inside a shell script.
Is there a way to set the value of shell script variable from inside the ISQL code. I do not want to write the results from the SQL to an output file.
Please let me know.

Regards,
Tipsy.

VARIABLE=`isql ...`

Doing this means I have to open a new dedicated ISQL connection just to get a value from DB & set it in the Shell variable.
I already have ISQL code inside the script doing a bunch of functionalities. I believe there is not other option but was hoping that I could do something inside the existing ISQL code. Do let me know.

Thanks.
Tipsy.

I use this kind of logic for Oracle sqlplus:

Code:

typeset IFS=$(echo '\012\001')
set -A ARRAY $(sqlplus ...)
for i in ${ARRAY[@]}
do
    case $i in
        some kind of search criteria) VAR=xyz ;;
        some kind of error code) report_error ;;
    esac
done

This gives you line-by-line control over the output.