Shell Programming and Scripting

#!/bin/bash
#
# set -n  
 set -x  

##########################################################
####################### FUNCTIONS ######################
##########################################################
file_exists () {
    echo "ENTERING FILE_EXISTS"
    echo "the value of \$1 is ${1}"
    echo "the value of \$2 is ${2}"

    if [ -e ${1} ]  #test for the flag file
        then
            if [ -e ${2} ]  #test for the .tar file
                then
                     `bzip2 ${2}`   #bzip the .tar file
                     `rm ${1}`       #remove the flag file
                else  #no .tar file found
                    mail -s "No ${2} file found" thumper@somewhere.net
            fi
        else  #no flag file found
                        mail -s "No ${1} file found" thumper@somewhere.net
    fi
    return 0
}
#### end
##########################################################
#################### MAIN ################################
##########################################################

while IFS=: read dir sname flag ext
do
        VAL_1="/$dir/$sname/$flag"
        VAL_2="/$dir/$sname/$ext"
        echo ${VAL_1}; echo ${VAL_2}
#       echo "Calling file_exists"

            file_exists ${VAL_1} ${VAL_2}

#       echo "Exited file_exists"
        echo "VAL_1 is ${VAL_1}"
        echo "VAL_2 is ${VAL_2}"
        echo "\$? is $?"
done < /root/scripts/bz-data
# End of script

test ~ $ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.33(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.