Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

How to check whether an input to a shell script contain only numeric values.
Is there any way to check against the following characters.
&
(
)
|
\
"
'
<
>
`
I've used the following way.

Code:

echo $1 | grep "[^0-9]\{2\}$"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "OK"
else
echo "Error"
fi

But, in this case there are two issues.

1) If the input contains numeric values the input value will be displayed which i don't want.
2) If special characters mentioned above are included, the script fails.

I've given up. I would really appreciate if anyone can help me out.

Thanks,
Sumesh

grep "[^0-9]\{2\}$" > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "OK"
else
echo "Error"
fi

1) If the input contains numeric values the input value will be displayed which i don't want.

Code:

echo $1 | grep "[0-9]\{2\}$" > /dev/null 

or

Code:

if  echo $1 | grep -q "[0-9]\{2\}$"
then
echo "OK"
else
echo "Error"
fi

2) If special characters mentioned above are included, the script fails.

Use quotes for special characters

Code:

ur_script '&'
ur_script \'

Aju,Anbu

Thanks for the reply.

I tried your code, but still not through.

I've to do grep against $1 and make sure that it should contain two digits of 0-9 range.

I tried to execute the script like

Code:

./shellpgm.sh `

In cases like these, error is thrown.

Pls help me.

Thanks,
Sumesh

I have answered for this in previous reply. Use \`

echo $1 | grep "^[0-9]\{2\}$" > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "OK"
else
echo "Error"
fi

use carret (^) outside brackets

Thanks Anbu. When i try executing the script with input preceeded by \ it works. Can u pls tell me how to concatenate \ with $1 and proceed.

Thanks a lot
Sumesh