Solaris

SunOS 5.10 Generic_142900-15 sun4u sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise
Greetings to all,
I am looking at this script below and need some help understanding a certain aspect of this script. As you can see, this script spawns another script "filewatcher.ksh". My question is will the "FTPpoller.ksh" script finish and exit before "filewatcher.ksh" if the conditions are right, or does the FTPpoller.ksh script wait until "filewatcher.ksh" is done?

FTPpoller.ksh :
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
exit -1
fi
while :
do
. /TIERS/ENV/fw/script/FTPfuser.ksh $1
len=${#RESULT}
# echo $len
if [[ $len -lt 4 ]]
then
. /TIERS/ENV/fw/script/filewatcher.ksh $1
exit 0
fi
sleep 3
done

Likely, but you can't tell for sure without analyzing filewatcher.ksh code.

Hi Jill,
filewatcher.ksh
#!/usr/bin/ksh
v1=$(ls -s $1 | awk {'print $1'})
v2=0
while [ $v2 != $v1 ]
do
v1=$(ls -s $1 | awk {'print $1'})
sleep 5
v2=$(ls -s $1 | awk {'print $1'})
done

---------- Post updated at 10:00 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:41 PM ----------

Hi Jill,
After looking at other simimlar postings, it seems that these scripts will execute in the same shell because they are execute using ./, so they will not exit until the final script is complete. Is this correct?

You are right, these scripts execute in the same shell but this isn't sufficient to prevent their calls to return before they complete their job. filewatcher.ksh code shows there is nothing launched in the background so this isn't the case anyway.

Jill,
If I want a given shell script to wait for a script that was "initiated" like the ones I've posted, do I need the "." or not. In other words, if I want a given script to "forget" about a script it initiated do i need "." or not?

Thanks a bunch, you are always most helpful.

Regards,
Harley

---------- Post updated at 10:50 PM ---------- Previous update was at 10:38 PM ----------

BTW, what would I need to do to make sure the other script waits for filewatcher script to complete. Is there something more that needs to be done to filewatcher to make sure the other scripts wait. Is there something besides "."?

No problem with that but why are you insisting calling me Jill ?
Either, launching a script in a subshell or in the current one doesn't affect the fact its commands are sequentially processed.
Please define "forget".
There is nothing particular to do. The shell will wait for the commands to complete as long as no background job is launched.
"." is irrelevant.

I appologize. I was using the prefix of you id "Jilliagre".

I guess I am confused about the ./, in another posting I read that if one wants a script to be called from within a script and you want the initiating script to end and not wait for the called script to complete you would either use ./ or not. I am not sure which one to use. I really need the scripts to wait until the final called script is done. Its a mess that was dumped on me and I am trying to make lemonade out of lemons.

---------- Post updated 03-09-11 at 07:46 PM ---------- Previous update was 03-08-11 at 11:24 PM ----------

I did a small test and I do see that the scripts will run sequentially regardless of how they are called. However, is there any scenario where a script will not run sequentially when called?