Shell Programming and Scripting

I need to distinguish between numerical characters in a script:

Code:

echo "Enter a number."
read num
if (( $num = [a-Z]*[a-Z] )) ; then
  exit 0
fi

this RegX does not work.

Any suggestions?

Use case (man case).

good call.

Code:

#! /usr/bin/ksh

needval=1
while ((needval)) ; do
        read val?'Enter a number - '
        if [[ $val = ?(+|-)+([0-9]) ]] ; then
                needval=0
        else
                echo $val is not an integer
        fi
done

echo val = $val
exit 0

#!/usr/bin/ksh

echo "Enter a number."
read NUM

((NUM2=${NUM}+1-1))
if [ "${NUM}" == "{NUM2} ]
then
echo "${NUM} is an integer."
else
echo "${NUM} is NO integer."
fi

or if "valstr" (usually in /var/sadm/bin) is available on your system.

#!/usr/bin/ksh

echo "Enter a number."
read NUM

valstr -r "^[0-9][0-9]*$" "${NUM}"
if [ ${?) -eq 0 ]
then
echo "${NUM} is an integer."
else
echo "${NUM} is NO integer."
fi

or

#!/usr/bin/ksh

echo "Enter a number."
read NUM

echo ${NUM} | grep "^[0-9][0-9]*$" > /dev/null
if [ ${?) -eq 0 ]
then
echo "${NUM} is an integer."
else
echo "${NUM} is NO integer."
fi

thanks for the replies, but I ended up using 'case' yesterday