Shell Programming and Scripting

hi,

i have a script that coverts the file time in epoch time.but the problem is perl is not working inside the k-shell
----------------------------------------------------------------

#!/bin/ksh

echo "Enter the file"
read n

perl -e 'print ((stat("n"))[9])'
----------------------------------------------------------------------

but perl is working in the command prompt.

You are not passing the value of n to Perl correctly.

Code:

perl -le 'print ((stat($ARGV[0]))[9])' "$n"

I took the liberty to add an -l (ell) option to add a newline to the printed value.

You could also use quoting to interpolate the value of n directly into the script:

Code:

perl -le 'print ((stat("'"$n"'"))[9])'

Read up on quoting to understand how that works.

thanks i got it now. thanks a lot dear,

can u tell me how to put the value into a variable..

i mean just like this:

value= perl -le 'print ((stat($ARGV[0]))[9])' "$n"

Use backticks. These are grave accents (ASCII 96) not regular apostrophes.

Code:

value=`perl -le 'print ((stat($ARGV[0]))[9])' "$n"`

Modern shells also offer the alternative syntax value=$(command ...) which is somewhat more readable.

thanks again for ur help.......one more request help me in this

-rwxrwxrwx 1 pipe pipe 369 May 29 05:05 s3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

#!/bin/ksh

echo "Enter the file"
read n

value=`perl -le 'print ((stat($ARGV[0]))[9])' "$n"`
echo $value

perl -le 'print scalar localtime($value);'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

o/p:

Enter the file
s3
1212055511
Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969
----------------------------------------------------------------------

the date of s3 is May 29 05:05 but its giving Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 ?

Again, you are not passing $value to Perl. Perl doesn't know what variables exist in the shell (except via the environment mechanism %ENV) -- you have to pass it in somehow.

Code:

perl -le 'print scalar localtime(shift @ARGV)' "$value"

or

Code:

perl -le 'print scalar localtime('"$value"')'

You really do need to understand what this does. We are passing in a Perl script in three pieces. The first piece is 'print scalar localtime(' and the third part is ')' and the part in between is expanded by the shell into the value of the shell variable $value. So what Perl sees and executes in this case has no variables at all; it effectively executes the following script:

Code:

perl -le 'print scalar localtime(1212055511)'

and has no idea where the value 1212055511 comes from.

many many thanks to u. actaully i m not so good in perl. mostly i use k-shell commands.

thanks a lot for ur precious help...........